ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the indirect laser induced temperature method (ILIT) - an approach for studying heterogeneous electron transfer; ILIT is particularly useful for studying systems where the redox species are attached to the electrode. It focuses on the fundamentals of the ILIT methodology and explores some of the questions that might be answered with its application. The charge-injection method can also be improved by decreasing the electrode area and thereby the injection current. This reduces the problem of saturation of the measurement amplifier during injection. However, the corresponding decrease in the electrode’s capacitance decreases its ability to drive the measurement amplifier, exacerbating the difficulty of achieving a sufficiently fast response. An effective optical probe sensitive enough to measure the small changes in interfacial voltage and/or composition produced by the ILIT perturbation could couple with ILIT to create a pump-probe technique that would effect a dramatic improvement in time resolution.
