The Effect of Ambient Conditions on the Potential Screening at Ionic Liquid – Electrode Interfaces

In comparison to the clean conditions of ultrahigh vacuum (UHV), we investigate influence ambient on potential screening (PS) at interfaces Au and Pt electrodes with ionic liquids [C8C1Im][Tf2N] [C8C1Im]Cl. Our study is based a proof-of-principle experiment that shows PS measurements performed by XPS yield same results as using specific 3-electrode sample holder setup, both in UHV. Based this, compare under ultraclean setup N2 air. We demonstrate there indeed an gas atmosphere, which depends applied voltage combination IL electrode material. For electrodes, pronounced for [C8C1Im]Cl, while hardly any seen. attribute observed effects mainly water affecting electrical double layers IL/electrode interfaces. addition, observe reaction products formed faradaic can lead contamination 3rd (reference electrode), yielding time-dependent deviations from true behavior.