W. Kautek et M. Sahre, SCANNING TUNNELING MICROSCOPIC ROUGHNESS STATISTICS ON THE ELECTROCHEMICAL QUARTZ MICROBALANCE, Surface & coatings technology, 67(3), 1994, pp. 167-171
Morphological changes and reconstructions of metallic electrode surfac
es can prevent direct monitoring of the molecular organization in the
electrochemical double layer by means of the electrochemical quartz mi
crobalance (EQMB). Roughness can feign mass changes by carrying electr
olyte in surface pockets. There are contradictory results from EQMB, c
harge, and scanning electron microscopy morphology investigations. We
resolved these problems by a statistical evaluation of scanning tunnel
ing microscopic images at gold surfaces emersed at relevant potentials
. No roughness change was observed in the hydroxide monolayer potentia
l region because this is thermodynamically more favourable, especially
in base, than growth of a three-dimensional hydroxide layer involving
molecular place exchange connected with roughening.