Review-Advances in Scanning Electrochemical Microscopy (SECM)

Scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) is unique among scanning probe methods in its quantitative rigor and in its ability to study samples in liquid environments with ease. SECM has become a popular and mature technique with a wide range of applications in electrochemical imaging, chemical kinetics, biological redox processes, and electrocatalytic reactions, among others. A major development in recent years is the ongoing shift from micrometer-scale experiments to the nanoscale. Recent advances in methodology have greatly increased the capacity of SECM to characterize interfaces at the nanoscale and to obtain molecular-level chemical information. The principles of SECM will be briefly introduced, and recent advances using this technique will be discussed. (C) 2015 The Electrochemical Society. [DOI: 10.1149/2.0141604jes] All rights reserved.