Optical microscopy to study single nanoparticles electrochemistry: From reaction to motion

Differentiating electrochemically active regions of indium tin oxide electrodes for hydrogen evolution and reductive decomposition reactions. An in situ optical microscopy approach

“…The dynamics of the nanoobjects was revealed in situ by optical microscopies [16], in the first instance by comparing the positions of the optical patterns formed at the ITO surface along different cycles of a same CV, as shown for NBs for two consecutive cycles in Figure 4b. When comparing the images recorded in the same region at the same potential NBs appear in random positions and at different locations between consecutive potential cycles, as expected for low activation barrier energy process.…”

“…In the context of single entity electrochemistry such complementary optical and electrochemical inspection is of fundamental mechanistic importance [11,12] since it allowed tracking optically, from optical microscopes, the displacement [13], deformation [14], chemical conversion or transformation [15][16][17][18][19][20][21] of individual objects subjected to an electrochemical reaction. In this respect, ITO electrodes have been used to optically detect the electrochemical collision of various nano-or micro-particles [12,20,22,23].…”

Possibilities of porous-structure representation – an overview

“…image [43][44] Optical Microscopy possesses a wide field of view, ensuring a high throughput screening and the possibility to collect vast amounts of data (see Fig. 5) for postprocessing and machine learning [35]. In the case of optical microscopy techniques, the preparation of the sample is not necessary [45].…”

The Hidden Role of the Supporting Electrode for Creating Heterogeneity in Single Entity Electrochemistry

“…As a result, single nanoparticle approaches, such as scanning probe techniques [13,14] and optical microscopy, [15,16] have emerged to help better understand structure‐property relationships in nanomaterials by allowing us to account for this inherent heterogeneity. Correlated optical microscopy and electrochemistry has been particularly useful in assigning structure‐property relationships by extracting quantitative electrochemical information from optical signatures at the single particle level [4,11,15,17–22] . Many of these optical approaches require a transparent and conductive supporting electrode that allows for both the ability to capture an optical signature from the nanoparticle(s) of interest as well as provide control over the substrate potential.…”