AlTal Faleh, Gao Jun
Department of Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy , Queen's University , Kingston , Ontario K7L 3N6 , Canada.
J Am Chem Soc. 2018 Aug 1;140(30):9737-9742. doi: 10.1021/jacs.8b06052. Epub 2018 Jul 19.
Bipolar electrochemistry (BPEC) is a versatile and powerful technique that has found applications in sensing, chemical synthesis, catalysis, fuel cells, and batteries, among others. In BPEC, the reactions of interest occur at a wireless, bipolar electrode (BPE). BPEC is most commonly carried out in an electrochemical cell that contains an electrolyte solution, in which a metallic BPE is immersed and polarized when the wired driving electrodes are biased. In this article, we demonstrate BPEC in a solid light-emitting electrochemical cell (LEC) that does not initially contain a BPE. Shining a focused laser beam onto the mixed conductor LEC film causes the illuminated spot to function as a BPE from which redox reactions are induced and visualized. Separate experiments using a photosensitizer (widely used in polymer solar cells) confirm that a BPE is formed on-demand via photoabsorption that causes the illuminated spot to have elevated photoconductivity. The simplicity of laser-induced BPEC offers exciting opportunities to explore sciences and applications of BPEC in the new realm of solid-state organic photonic devices.
双极电化学（BPEC）是一种用途广泛且强大的技术，已在传感、化学合成、催化、燃料电池和电池等领域得到应用。在BPEC中，感兴趣的反应发生在无线双极电极（BPE）上。BPEC最常见于含有电解质溶液的电化学池中进行，当有线驱动电极施加偏压时，金属BPE浸入其中并被极化。在本文中，我们展示了在最初不含BPE的固体发光电化学池（LEC）中的BPEC。将聚焦激光束照射到混合导体LEC薄膜上会使被照射的点起到BPE的作用，由此引发并可视化氧化还原反应。使用光敏剂（广泛应用于聚合物太阳能电池）进行的单独实验证实，通过光吸收可按需形成BPE，这会使被照射的点具有更高的光电导率。激光诱导BPEC的简单性为在固态有机光子器件新领域探索BPEC的科学及应用提供了令人兴奋的机会。
