Wu Yanfang, Jamali Sina, Tilley Richard D, Gooding J Justin
School of Chemistry and Australian Centre for NanoMedicine, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia.
School of Chemistry and Electron Microscope Unit, Mark Wainwright Analytical Centre, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia.
Faraday Discuss. 2022 Apr 5;233(0):10-32. doi: 10.1039/d1fd00088h.
Nanoelectrochemistry, where electrochemical processes are controlled and investigated with nanoscale resolution, is gaining more and more attention because of the many potential applications in energy and sensing and the fact that there is much to learn about fundamental electrochemical processes when we explore them at the nanoscale. The development of instrumental methods that can explore the heterogeneity of electrochemistry occurring across an electrode surface, monitoring single molecules or many single nanoparticles on a surface simultaneously, have been pivotal in giving us new insights into nanoscale electrochemistry. Equally important has been the ability to synthesise or fabricate nanoscale entities with a high degree of control that allows us to develop nanoscale devices. Central to the latter has been the incredible advances in nanomaterial synthesis where electrode materials with atomic control over electrochemically active sites can be achieved. After introducing nanoelectrochemistry, this paper focuses on recent developments in two major application areas of nanoelectrochemistry; electrocatalysis and using single entities in sensing. Discussion of the developments in these two application fields highlights some of the advances in the fundamental understanding of nanoelectrochemical systems really driving these applications forward. Looking into our nanocrystal ball, this paper then highlights: the need to understand the impact of nanoconfinement on electrochemical processes, the need to measure many single entities, the need to develop more sophisticated ways of treating the potentially large data sets from measuring such many single entities, the need for more new methods for characterising nanoelectrochemical systems as they operate and the need for material synthesis to become more reproducible as well as possess more nanoscale control.
纳米电化学是指以纳米级分辨率控制和研究电化学过程，由于其在能源和传感领域的众多潜在应用，以及当我们在纳米尺度上探索基本电化学过程时还有很多有待了解的地方，因此越来越受到关注。能够探索电极表面发生的电化学不均匀性、同时监测表面上单个分子或许多单个纳米粒子的仪器方法的发展，对于我们深入了解纳米级电化学起到了关键作用。同样重要的是能够高度可控地合成或制造纳米级实体，这使我们能够开发纳米级器件。后者的核心是纳米材料合成取得的惊人进展，在这方面可以实现对电化学活性位点具有原子级控制的电极材料。在介绍了纳米电化学之后，本文重点关注纳米电化学两个主要应用领域的最新进展；电催化和在传感中使用单个实体。对这两个应用领域发展的讨论突出了纳米电化学系统基础理解方面的一些进展，这些进展实际上推动了这些应用的发展。展望未来，本文接着强调：需要了解纳米限域对电化学过程的影响，需要测量许多单个实体，需要开发更复杂的方法来处理来自测量如此多单个实体的潜在大量数据集，需要更多新方法来表征运行中的纳米电化学系统，以及需要使材料合成更具可重复性并具备更多纳米级控制。
