Effect of conductivity and frequency on detection of heterogeneities in solid/liquid interfaces using local electrochemical impedance Theoretical and experimental study

Abstract

This short communication demonstrates, by solving the Laplace equation with proper boundary conditions (BC) using finite element method (FEM), that it is not possible to establish a correlation between what happens in the electrolyte near an active boundary and what really occurs at the actual boundary if adequate ranges of electrolyte conductivity and input AC signal frequency are not selected, especially when inhomogeneities approximated by Neumann BC are present. Experimental evidence obtained by local electrochemical impedance mapping (LEIM) supports the theoretical results.