Electrochemistry at the local scale.

My research activity is mechanistic and methodological. It follows one guiding question: on a real electrode, is reactivity governed by the intrinsic active site, or by its local environment?

Overview

A global electrochemical current averages the whole electrode and can hide a large diversity of local behaviours. The work performed in my team therefore tries to see where a reaction really takes place, how fast it proceeds there, and which local conditions make one site active while another remains silent.

Answering these questions means seeing past the ensemble current and revealing the hidden local heterogeneous truth. We have built the toolbox that reveals local reactions by combining local electrochemical probes with quantitative in situ and operando optical microscopy, single-entity measurements, correlative microscopy, modelling and data analysis. The methods are a way to reach the mechanism: from surfaces and nanoparticles to electrocatalysis, batteries and corrosion.