posted on 2007-12-15, 00:00authored byPatrick J. Rodgers, Shigeru Amemiya
Cyclic voltammetry at micropipet electrodes is applied to
the kinetic study of ion transfer at liquid/liquid interfaces.
Simple and facilitated transfer of an ion that is initially
present outside a tapered pipet was simulated by the finite
element method, enabling complete analysis of the resulting transient cyclic voltammogram (CV) with a sigmoidal
forward wave followed by a peak-shaped reverse wave.
Without serious effects of uncompensated ohmic resistance and capacitive current, more parameters can be
determined from a transient CV than from the steady-state
counterpart obtained with a smaller pipet or at a slower
scan rate. A single transient CV under kinetic limitation
gives all parameters in a Butler−Volmer-type model, i.e.,
the formal potential, the transfer coefficient, the standard
ion-transfer rate constant, k0, and the charge of a transferring ion as well as its diffusion coefficients in both phases.
Advantages of the transient approach are demonstrated
experimentally for reversible, quasi-reversible and irreversible cases. With a multistep transfer mechanism,
an irreversible transient CV of facilitated protamine transfer gives an apparent k0 value of 3.5 × 10-5 cm/s, which
is the smallest k0 value reported so far. With the largest
reliable k0 value of ∼1 cm/s reported in the literature,
an intrinsic rate of the interfacial ion transfer varies by at
least 5 orders of magnitude.