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46967-SE
Post-Modern Electrochemistry, at the 90th Canadian Society for Chemistry Conference, Winnipeg, Manitoba, May 2007
The proposed symposium was held at the 90th Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition, 2006, Winnipeg, Manitoba. This is THE conference where the Canadian chemistry community meets once a year. Canada as a large number of electrochemists hence it is important for us to have a venue at the CSC meeting. In fact there have been electrochemistry symposia at the CSC for several years now.
The proposed symposium title was chosen to convey that our generation's contribution to science and society often comes from innovative new approaches that arose from recent leaps in technological developments while at the same time we still very much rely on the contributions of our predecessors for inspiration and knowledge. The title, being broad in nature, encourages presentations from a variety of areas of electrochemistry including spectroelectrochemistry and surface modification for electrocatalysis, fuel cells and electronic applications. Because electrochemistry takes place at the interface between a liquid and a solid this discipline includes fundamental aspects of physical chemistry, surface sciences and analytical chemistry. Electrode preparation and analysis in addition involve organic and inorganic synthesis and materials chemistry. The symposium had four invited contributions including the one from Prof. Compton from Oxford, UK, ca. 30 additional oral contributions and ca. 10 poster presentations. All presentations were related to fundamental research in a wide number of topics such as fuel cell research and catalysis while others dealt with surface reactions/modifications using metal complexes, organic molecules, polymers and self-assembled alkane thiols layers. Prof. Compton is a world leader in electrochemistry who is providing groundbreaking contributions in both experimental and computational aspects of electrified interfaces. His research encompasses a wide range of topics including sonoelectrochemistry, photoelectrochemistry and nanoelectrochemistry. Prof. Compton's work has significantly impact the current understanding of fundamental electrochemical aspects and provides the basis for important applications. He gave a lively and interesting presentation that included new results on the theory of the current-voltage response of partially active electrodes including simulation of carbon nanotube or nanoparticle modified electrodes.
Prof. Henry White from the University of Utah, also invited to talk at the meeting, gave an excellent lecture on electrochemical processes taking place in synthetic and biological nanopores.
Our two Canadian invited speakers Prof. Z.F. Ding from the University of Western Ontario and Prof. R. L. McCreery discussed new developments in scanning electrochemical microscopy for the characterization of materials, live cell and as a microfabrication tool; and electron transport and redox reactions in carbon-based molecular electronic junctions, respectively.
Overall the symposium was a great success the invited speakers participated actively to the symposium they attended sessions and talked to students and other attendees at coffee breaks and during poster sessions. We were competing with other symposium for attendance but managed to have good attendance throughout the symposium.
