Publication date: 6th November 2020
The classical way to characterize reaction products in electrochemistry involves steady-state electrolysis combined with intermittent or offline product determination, for example with chromatography, nuclear magnetic resonance etc. These methods are excellent to quantify products in terms of faradaic efficiencies and reaction rates, but they offer temporal resolution in the order of several minutes. Therefore, it is not possible to determine the product formation under dynamic conditions. We recently developed an internationally unique method to characterize the products of electrochemical reactions at the time they are formed, the electrochemical real-time mass spectrometry (EC-RTMS) [1-4]. Contrary to previous approaches, EC-RTMS is not limited by the vapor pressure of analytes or the presence of non-volatile salts. I will present he basic principles of EC-RTMS, together with its capabilities exemplified for some electrochemical reactions such as the reduction of carbon dioxide or the oxidation of alcohols.
