Licence to go Where no Chemist has Gone Before

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have overcome one of the significant research challenges facing electrochemists. For the first time they have found a way of probing right into the heart of an electrochemical reaction. Their breakthrough will help scientists understand how catalysts work. If this is understood even better catalysts could be created.

Chemists and engineers, under the direction of Dr Pete Licence in the School of Chemistry, overcame significant challenges to be able to study the reaction at the point where the solution touches the surface of the metal electrode bringing in the electricity. They have done this by using spectroscopy under ultra high vacuum.

Because catalysts — materials used to create a chemical reaction — are dissolved in a solution it is often very hard to understand why they work so well. Normally solutions evaporate almost instantaneously under high vacuum. The team overcame this obstacle by using one of the many room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) — so-called ‘designer solvents’ which do not evaporate under such conditions. Dr Licence said: “It wasn’t easy
and we had phenomenal problems. We could do the electrochemistry in the vacuum and we could measure the spectra of ionic liquids — but to do both at the same time has been a real uphill struggle — but now we have cracked it.”

Funding was received from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Leverhulme Trust. Dr Licence’s research, in the Nottingham Ionic Liquids Group, focuses on both the exploitation and manipulation of some of the unusual physical properties that are offered by alternative solvent systems, especially room temperature ionic liquids. His group is part of the University’s DICE project, which brings chemists and engineers together to solve challenging scientific problems.