Tales of the Unexpected: New Perspectives on Electrochemistry at Carbon Electrodes and Membranes

Speaker: Pat Unwin, Professor and Head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick

A wide variety of carbon materials are used in electrochemistry, with diverse applications that include (bio)electroanalysis and sensors, batteries and fuel cells, and membranes. The family of carbon materials is broad, spanning sp2 and sp3 materials, and includes 1D carbon nanotubes, 2D graphene (and non-carbon analogues) and 3D graphite and conducting diamond, along with amorphous carbon and various composites. The electronic properties of each of these materials are further influenced by local structure and defects, method of preparation, and (for 1-D and 2-D materials) the conducting support, the number of layers, and their arrangement. Ultimately, all of these factors can influence interfacial charge transfer and electrochemistry.

In this lecture, I shall discuss our work in this area, which has established a new paradigm for structure-activity across a wide range of carbon materials and electrochemical processes. We combine high resolution electrochemical imaging data with information from other microscopy and spectroscopy techniques applied to the same area of an electrode surface, in a correlative-electrochemical microscopy approach, to produce highly resolved and unambiguous pictures of electrode activity at the nanoscale. The new models of electrochemistry offer surprises, overturn longstanding dogma, unify observations across length scales, and provide a foundation for future rational applications of carbon electrodes.

Pat is an inventor of instrumental techniques that have provided new ways for scientists to view electrochemical and interfacial processes. His inventions in the fields of electrochemical imaging allow the key building blocks and features of complex electrodes to be targeted and studied in exquisite detail. Generations of scientists around the world have taken up and used techniques and instruments developed in his group to solve a wide range of problems, and several companies manufacture instruments based on his inventions. He is the author of more than 450 published papers, book chapters and patents.

Pat is Professor and Head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2024. He is a Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry (2011) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2012). His achievements have been recognized by international prizes and lectureships from the Royal Society of Chemistry (Marlow, Corday-Morgan, Barker and Tilden prizes), the American Chemical Society (Electrochemistry Award from the Analytical Chemistry Division), the International Society of Electrochemistry (Experimental Electrochemistry Award) and the Society of Electroanalytical Chemistry (Charles N. Reilley Award). He was a European Research Council Advanced Investigator (2010-15) and Royal Society Wolfson Merit Awardee (2017-22). He is the founding Editor-in-Chief (2024) of ACS Electrochemistry, published by the American Chemical Society.

Pat graduated from the University of Liverpool (BSc, 1985), with the Leverhulme Prize and Leblanc Medal as the top-ranked student in the Department of Chemistry, and then obtained a DPhil at the University of Oxford (1989). He was elected Junior Research Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford (1988), before winning a SERC/NATO Fellowship, which he held at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Pat established the Warwick Electrochemistry & Interfaces Group in 1991 and he has been Lecturer (1991-96), and Senior Lecturer (1996-98), before becoming Professor at Warwick (since 1998). He was Founding Director of the Warwick Centre for Analytical Sciences (2008-11) and Founding Director of the EPSRC-Warwick Molecular Analytical Science Centre for Doctoral Training (2014-23).