The Rising and Receding Fortunes of Electrochemists

Electrochemists This is the golden age of electrochemistry. Never before has this discipline found itself at the nexus of so many developing technologies: batteries, capacitors, fuel cells; solar-to-electrical energy conversion at liquid junctions; nanocrystalline solar cells; and organic solar cells. New electrochemical energy-harvesting technologies are also being explored for thermal energy harvesting, and these are just the electrochemistry-related technologies pertaining to energy. Capacitive water deionization and electrochemical sensors and actuators are being widely explored, and the use of electrochemical methods in electronic manufacturing, coatings, and the synthesis of materials (including aluminum) remains as important as ever. Energy is an international priority and an abundance of research funding has been made available for applied electrochemistry. Prominent programs just the United States include The Energy Innovation Hubs, grants from the ARPA-E, many of the Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs), and others. This funding is directed at all of the energy-related topics listed above. This infusion of resourcesparticularly from the U.S. Department of Energyhas attracted new practitioners into these areas. Not surprisingly, at ACS Nano we have witnessed rapid increases in the submission of manunscripts related to electrochemical energy science. Our goal at ACS Nano is to publish the best work across these areas to give insight into the opportunities ahead, as new energy-generation and storage solutions increasingly use nanoscale science and engineering. Ironically, fundamental electrochemical investigations have not been buoyed by these rising seas. In our view, the need for research that elucidates fundamental aspects of electrochemistry in support of its applications in energy has never been greater. We would welcome greater efforts and a consequent larger number of insightful submissions in this area. We, as a community, are just starting to appreciate that so-called “electrical double-layer capacitors” adsorb ions (often partially desolvated) to store energy, and that there is no room for the formation of a classical Helmholtz layer in microporous carbon electrodes. Textbook schematics of the double layer at metal surfaces that show highly oriented water dipoles contradict the latest research findings, suggesting that layers of water at metal surfaces have frustrated structures. Understanding the effects of ion charge, radius, and hydration energy on adsorption interactions of ions on oxide surfaces is much more complex. These are amongst the pressing fundamental issues that should be addressed by electrochemists.