New Trends in Electrochemistry

In recent years, electrochemical energy conversion and electrochemical sensors have been intensively investigated with the growing global interest in energy and health, and electroanalytical techiniques have been widely used for the characterization of new synthetic materials. In this special collection, we would like to introduce the new research results of researchers who are active in these fields in Korea.

"PILLAR EFFECT IN Ni-rich cathode ofLi-ion Bettery by Ammonia Thermal Treatment"

Ni-rich LiNixMnyCozO2 (NCM) cathode in lithium-ion batteries is attractive due to high specific capacity but it suffers from stability issue during delithiation. Cation disorder is typically detrimental to capacity, but a controlled amount of cation disorder can serve as pillar and hence increase stability. In this work, we use hot NH3 treatment to induce pillar effect by moving a controlled amount of Ni2+ into Li-layers to alleviate the structural collapse.

"Iridium-cobalt alloy nanotubes as a bifunctional electrocatalyst for pH-universal overall water splitting"

Bimetallic alloy nanotubes of Ir and Co (IrxCo1?x) were prepared from the thermal H2-reduction of the Ir?Co mixed oxide nanotubes (IrxCo1?xOy) that were synthesized via electrospinning and post calcination. The alloy nanotubes having a half of each element (denoted as Ir0.50Co0.50) presented excellent catalytic activity for pH-universal electrochemical overall water splitting, better than commercial Pt/C and Ir/C.

"Bioanalytical chemistry with scanning electrochemical microscopy"

Recently, intercellular heterogeneity has attracted attention as an important research topic. It is to identify biological information by analyzing each individual cell rather than a bulk population of cells at the same time. However, the size of a single cell is too small to analyze it. In this review, we will discuss the fabrication of nanoelectrodes that can improve high spatial resolution and the application of scanning electrochemical microscopy to analyze cellular respiration, reactive oxygen species/reactive nitrogen species, and neurotransmitters.