Electrochemical Processes in Glow Discharge at the Gas-Solution Interface

The term electrolysis is conventionally applied to chemical changes brought about by passing an electric current between conducting electrodes dipping into a liquid phase containing ions, where the changes can be satisfactorily explained by electron transfer between the ions and the electrodes. If, however, the liquid phase is itself made an electrode and an electrical glow-discharge is passed to it from a conductor located in the gas space above the surface, a completely different situation arises in which novel chemical reactions can be brought about in the liquid phase, and this process is referred to as glow-discharge electrolysis (GDE). It is worth emphasizing that it differs fundamentally from chemical decomposition brought about by electrical discharge between metallic electrodes in gases at low pressures, since in GDE, the reactions of interest are initiated in the liquid phase, and the quantity of electricity passed rather than electrical power dissipated is found to be the governing variable, as in conventional electrolysis.