ELECTROCHEMICAL NUCLEATION ON ACTIVE-SITES - WHAT DO WE MEASURE IN REALITY - PART I

This paper considers the process of electrochemical nucleation in the general case when active sites may appear and disappear from the elect rode surface simultaneously with the nuclei of the new phase. In this case it is impossible to distinguish between the actual nucleation rat e and the rate of appearance and disappearance of active sites, especi ally if the nucleation experiments are carried out by means of the sta ndard pulse potentiostatic technique. To surmount this difficulty we p ropose a modified potential step method which allows one to fix the en ergetic state of the electrode surface. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.