Diamond Electrochemistry

Preface It has been nearly ten years since we began to build an international consortium in the area of diamond electrochemistry, with our First International Mini-Symposium, held in Tokyo in 1997. Since that time, we have tried to keep this tradition going. In addition, there have been International Symposia on Diamond Materials every two years, held under the auspices of the Electrochemical Society, with a strong complement of presentations in the area of electrochemical apphcations of conductive diamond. These symposia, together with others, such as the European Conferences on Diamond and Diamond-Like Materials and the International Conferences on New Diamond Science and Technology, held in the Eastern Hemisphere, have kept this field growing at a rapid rate. Almost every aspect of electrochemistry has been impacted by the diamond electrode, from electroanalysis to electrolysis. Recently also, the field has started to mature, with the development of many practical apphcations of diamond electrodes. Some of these are being commercialized at present. Two examples are the diamond electrochemical detector for liquid chromatography and the large-scale diamond electrode for industrial wastewater treatment. For the present volume, we have invited representatives fi^om nearly every group in the world that has been active in the field, and we are very pleased that many of these groups have responded with chapters devoted to both their own work as well as that of others. VI Certainly we realize that it is virtually impossible to capture everything that is going on in any given field at a particular time, but our group of authors has tried hard to accompUsh the impossible. In Chapter 1, Rao, et al., have provided a historical introduction to the area, which got its start in 1983 in Japan in a pubUcation by Iwaki et al. In Chapter 2, Ivandini, et al., provide fiirther historical perspective and introduce the basics of the preparation and characterization of chemical vapor-deposited (CVD) diamond films. In Chapter 3, Martin, et al., discuss several fimdamental aspects of diamond electrochemistry, including the large working potential range ("wide potential window"), aspects of the reactivity, the optical transparency, semiconductor aspects, and the surface conductivity phenomenon. In Chapter 4, Pleskov gives a fuU account of the semiconductor aspects of diamond electrochemistry. In Chapter 5, Levy-Clement focuses on the role of the boron doping level in determining the electrochemical properties, together with Raman spectroscopy as a useful diagnostic tool in estimating the effective doping level. In Chapter 6, Yoshimura et al. examine the factors that determine the potential working range for various non-aqueous solvent/electrolyte systems, including theo