Speaker
Description
Homogeneous electrocatalysis based on transition metal complexes holds great potential for carbon dioxide utilization. In order to develop an efficient catalytic system, detailed knowledge about each step of the complex reaction chain is highly desirable. Until now, only long-lived intermediates have been observed. Therefore, the identification of short-lived intermediates and the determination of their life-times is of crucial importance here.
Spectroelectrochemistry has proven to be a powerful experimental approach to determine the reaction dynamics during electrocatalytic processes. In this work, a time-resolved UV-vis spectroelectrochemistry setup is developed using laser pulses to achieve a time resolution of microseconds. In contrast to previous work, this enables precise detection of catalytic reaction rates down to the diffusion limit. In the experiment, a femtosecond supercontinuum is focused closely to the working electrode surface inside a custom electrochemical cell based on a quartz glass cuvette. Upon applying a potential step to the electrodes, the induced absorption change inside the diffusion layer is measured as a function of time.
