Abstract
Electrochemical studies on charge transfer reactions across the interface between two immiscible electrolyte solutions (ITIES) have greatly attracted researcher's attentions due to their wide applicability in research fields such as ion sensing and biosensing, modeling of biomembranes, pharmacokinetics, phase-transfer catalysis, fuel generation and solar energy conversion. In particular, there have been extensive efforts made on developing sensing platforms for ionic species and biomolecules via gelifying one of the liquid phases to improve mechanical stability in addition to creating microscale interfaces to reduce ohmic loss. In this review, we will mainly discuss on the basic principles, applications and future aspects of various sensing platforms utilizing ion transfer reactions across the ITIES. The ITIES is classified into four types: (i) a conventional liquid/liquid interface, (ii) a micropipette supported liquid/liquid interface, (iii) a single microhole or an array of microholes supported liquid/ liquid interface on a thin polymer film, and (iv) a microhole array liquid/liquid interface on a silicon membrane. Research efforts on developing ion selective sensors for water pollutants as well as biomolecule sensors will be highlighted based on the use of direct and assisted ion transfer reactions across these different ITIES configurations.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 443-455 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Applied Chemistry for Engineering |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| State | Published - Oct 2013 |
Keywords
- Assisted ion transfer
- Interface between two immiscible electrolyte solutions
- Ion transfer reaction
- Ion-selective sensors
- Micro-water/gel interfaces