Most of the electrochemistry processes occur within the electrical double layer (EDL) at the electrode/electrolyte interfaces. In spite of some classic EDL theories, very limited experimental information is available about these solvent or solute species within such EDLs. We have developed in-situ liquid cells to study such electrolyte / electrode interfaces by means of soft x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), particularly in total electron yield (TEY) mode. Because those secondary electrons can only penetrate extremely short distance in condensed matters (typically several nm in water), the information we can obtain from XAS TEY spectra are surface/interface sensitive. With such in-situ XAS technique, we characterized the interfacial water at different metal electrode surfaces, including Au, Pt and Ni. It was found that the interfacial water layer has significantly different hydrogen-bonding network structure compared to the bulk water. Under different bias, the polar water molecules will respond to the external electrical field and reorient at the gold electrode surface, which significantly alters the amount of distorted or broken hydrogen bonds.[1][1]. J. J. Velasco-Velez, C. H. Wu, J.-H. Guo, M. B. Salmeron, submitted

In-situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy study of metal/water interfaces

248th National Meeting (2014)

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