Electrochemistry at Nanometer-Scaled Electrodes.

The article informs that the an electro-chemical reaction is made up of a series of chemical and physical steps occurring at very small length scales. The transfer of an electron between the electrode surface and a redox molecule takes place over a distance no greater that 2 nm and occurs in an interfacial region defined by the radius of adsorbed ions and solvent molecules, as welt as the distance that surface electric fields extend into the solution. In the late 1970s, analytical chemists first considered the role of electrode size in relation to electrochemical length scales. Electrodes of nanometer dimensions are also employed in in-situ electrochemical scanned probe microscopies, although their electrochemical behavior is not always of primary interest in these applications.