Page 56 - MODERN ELECTROCHEMISTRY

CHAPTER 1

ELECTROCHEMISTRY

1.1. A STATE OF EXCITEMENT
Electrochemistry was born from a union between biochemistry and electricity and
is the essential discipline among the chemical sciences needed to prepare society for
near-future times. The birth of electrochemistry happened over 200 years ago (1791)
in Bologna, Italy, where Luigi Galvani was dissecting a frog: “One of those who was
assisting me touched lightly and by chance the point of his scalpel to the internal crural
nerves of the frog (an electric machine was nearby), then suddenly all the muscles of
its limbs were seen to be contracted ...”
Galvani’s discovery was followed nine years later by that of his compatriot, Volta,
who communicated to the Royal Society in London an amazing thing: If one used a
pasteboard membrane to separate silver plates from zinc plates, and wetted the
ensemble with salt water, an electric current flowed. Volta called his device “the
artificial electric organ.”
These past events in Italy resonate in a modern decision of the California state
legislature. In 2002, California will begin limiting the number of “emitting” vehicles
that may be sold in the state, with sales of these being completely eliminated by 2017.
Volta’s discovery is the basis for the development by U.S. automakers of an emission-
free vehicle—one that is electrochemically powered.
In 1923, Debye and Hückel wrote a paper describing for the first time a credible
theory of the properties of ionically conducting solutions. In 1994, Mamantov and
Popov edited a book in which the first chapter is called “Solution Chemistry: A Cutting
Edge in Modern Technology.” The book describes some frontiers of the electrochem-
istry of today: chloraluminate-organic systems that make room-temperature molten
salts the basis of high-energy electricity storers; the use of vibrational spectroscopy to
study ion-ion interactions; and the application of the molecular dynamic technique to
the ionic solutions unfolded by Debye and Hückel just one lifetime before.
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