ABSTRACT
In just a few years, scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) has emerged as a power-ful technique for investigating chemical kinetics at liquid interfaces, as described in several recent reviews [1-3]. The considerable interest in SECM is that it overcomes many of the problems inherent in conventional methodologies for studying reactions at liquid-liquid interfaces, particularly charge transfer at the interface between two immiscible electrolyte solutions (ITIES). SECM employs an ultramicroelectrode (UME) [4-7], typically a diskshaped electrode with a diameter on the micrometer scale, positioned in close proximity to a target interface, to initiative and/or monitor an interfacial process of interest. The response of the UME probe provides local kinetic and chemical information. In this chapter we highlight the SECM techniques that can be used to study electron transfer (ET), ion transfer (IT), and various molecular transfer processes at liquid-liquid inter-faces. We also discuss developments in the methodology that facilitate the investigation of liquid-gas interfaces and molecular monolayers at liquid surfaces.
