Microfluidic electrochemistry flow and potential controllers

燃料电池是一种发展中的能量转换技术。使用可从农业或其他生物质来源获得的乙醇等替代燃料，为减少对石油的依赖以满足未来的能源需求提供了一种途径。乙醇等分子比氢和甲醇等现有燃料电池燃料更复杂。因此，了解它们如何在燃料电池中运行和分裂更加复杂。所要求的设备允许开发新的微流体电化学方法来研究这些更复杂的过程。分子沿着一个非常细的通道流动，在那里它们通过不同电压的电极。通过测量不同电极处的电流以及它们如何取决于电压和流速，可以确定分子的氧化机制。两个流合并的实验也可以帮助找出发生了什么。例如，突然从惰性流体变为具有燃料的流体意味着可以研究燃料与电极相互作用的最初阶段。由于电极有时会迅速失活，这可能是研究失活过程并了解如何防止失活的重要方法。

Fuel cells are a developing technology for energy conversion. The use of alternative fuels such as ethanol, that can be derived from agricultural or other biomass sources, provides a way to be less reliant on oil for future energy needs. Molecules such as ethanol are more complicated than the established fuel cell fuels such as hydrogen and methanol. Therefore, understanding of how they operate and split up in fuel cells is more complicated. The equipment requested allows new microfluidic electrochemical methods to be developed to study these more complicated processes. The molecules are flowed down a very thin channel where they pass electrodes at different voltages. By measuring the currents at the different electrodes and how they depend on the voltages and flow rates, the mechanism of oxidation of the molecule can be determined. Experiments where two flows merge can also help to find out what is happening. For example suddenly changing from an inert fluid to the fluid with fuel means that the very first stages of interaction of the fuel with an electrode can be studied. Since electrodes sometimes deactivate quickly, this can be an important way to study the deactivation process and understand how to prevent it.