ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned mainly with the electrochemistry and, in particular, the electrocatalytic behavior of polycrystalline gold surfaces. Only brief attention will be given to single crystal gold surfaces. Although the study of the latter is quite an active area of research, ordered, single crystal surfaces do not, in theory, contain random defects which are the basis of surface active site [1] and surface catalysis behavior. In reality single crystal metal surfaces generally contain plenty of imperfections [2,3] and it is the low coverage, protruding (or low lattice coordination) surface metal atoms present at the defect sites that dominate the electrocatalytic properties of surfaces. The importance of protruding surface metal atoms is now widely accepted in the surface catalysis area; for example, in a recent account of the mechanism of the interaction of oxygen with gold and its relevance to catalytic oxidation Bond and co-workers [4] stressed the role of such atoms, in very small metal particles, as electron donors that react with oxygen to form ionic species such as Au+-O2− which are the precursors for oxygen dissociation.
