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The voltammetry for the reduction of oxygen at a microdisc electrode is reported in two room temperature ionic liquids: 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl) imide ([Bmpyrr][NTf2]) and trihexyltetradecylphosphonium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl) imide ([P 14,6,6,6][NTf2]) at 298 K. Simulated voltammograms using Butler-Volmer theory and Symmetric Marcus-Hush (SMH) theory were compared with experimental data. Butler-Volmer theory consistently provided experimental parameters with a higher level of certainty than SMH theory. A value of solvent reorganisation energy for oxygen reduction in ionic liquids was inferred for the first time as 0.4-0.5 eV, which is attributable to inner-sphere reorganisation with a negligible contribution from solvent reorganisation. The developed Butler-Volmer and Symmetric Marcus-Hush programs are also used to theoretically study the possibility of kinetically limited steady state currents, and to establish an approximate equivalence relationship between microdisc electrodes and spherical electrodes resting on a surface for steady state voltammetry for both Butler-Volmer and Symmetric Marcus-Hush theory. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Theory is presented to simulate both chronoamperometry and cyclic voltammetry at porous electrodes fabricated by means of electro-deposition around spherical templates. A theoretical method to extract heterogeneous rate constants for quasireversible and irreversible systems is proposed by the approximation of decoupling of the diffusion within the porous electrode and of bulk diffusion to the electrode surface.

We computationally investigate the chronoamperometric current response of spherical and cubic particles on a supporting insulating surface. By using the method of finite differences and random walk simulations, we can show that both systems exhibit identical responses on all time scales if their exposed surface areas are equal. This result enables a simple and computationally efficient method to treat certain spherical geometries in random walk based noise investigations.

A computational model for the simulation of a double band collector-generator experiment is applied to the situation where two electrochemical reactions occur concurrently. It is shown that chronoamperometric measurements can be used to take advantage of differences in diffusion coefficients to measure the concentrations of both electroactive species simultaneously, by measuring the time at which the collection efficiency reaches a specific value. The separation of the electrodes is shown to not affect the sensitivity of the method (in terms of percentage changes in the measured time to reach the specified collection efficiency), but wider gaps can provide a greater range of (larger) absolute values of this characteristic time. It is also shown that measuring the time taken to reach smaller collection efficiencies can allow for the detection of smaller amounts of whichever species diffuses faster. The case of a system containing both ascorbic acid and opamine in water is used to exemplify the method, and it is shown that mole fractions of ascorbic acid between 0.055 and 0.96 can, in principle, be accurately measured., Comment: 34 pages, 8 figures

The oxidation of potassium ferrocyanide, K4Fe (CN)6, in aqueous solution under fully supported conditions is carried out at interdigitated band and ring electrode arrays, and compared to theoretical models developed to simulate the processes. Simulated data is found to fit well with experimental results using literature values of diffusion coefficients for Fe ( CN ) 6 4 - and Fe ( CN ) 6 3 - . The theoretical models are used to compare responses from interdigitated band and ring arrays, and the size of ring array required to approximate the response to a linear band array is investigated. An equation is developed for the radius of ring required for a pair of electrodes in a ring array to give a result with 5% of a pair of electrodes in a band array. This equation is found to be independent of the scan rate used over six orders of magnitude.