The study of lubricant additive reactions using non-aqueous electrochemistry

Electrochemical kinetic techniques are widely used for studying redox proce sses in aqueous solutions and in recent years have begun to be applied in n on-polar solvents. This paper describes the application of such techniques to investigate lubricant additive reactions in solution in lubricating oils . The main practical difficulty is the low electrical conductivity of most liquid lubricants. A number of different approaches have been employed to a y to overcome this problem, including the use of microelectrodes, of suppor ting electrolytes to enhance the conductivity of lubricants, and also the u se of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) system, with a Pt-Ir STM tip as the working electrode separated by nanometer scale gaps front a Pt substra te as reference-counter electrode.