Soft Probes for Scanning Electrochemical Microscopy

This chapter combines microfluidics and conventional scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) by developing so‐called soft probes that contain amperometric microelectrodes (MEs) and/or microfluidic channels. It introduces briefly the fundamentals, applications, and limitations of SECM, and discusses the soft SECM probes and the possibility to work on large extended samples. SECM has been used for a wide range of applications including the investigation of live cells, screening of photo/electrocatalyst libraries, studying corrosion and corrosion inhibitors, and analyzing the molecular transport across membranes. Although many approaches have been reported to apply SECM and related techniques with nanometric tips to investigate electroanalytical and electrocatalytical phenomena on the nanoscale, there is still a deep interest in studying samples as large as square centimeters such as combinatorial material libraries or tissues. Soft ME probes for gentle contact mode scanning of fragile and extended samples broaden the field of SECM applications.