Interdigitated metal electrodes for high-resolution in situ electrochemical NMR

Despite being among the most widely used spectroscopic methods, high-resolution NMR has not yet been applied routinely to electrochemistry and (organic) electrosynthesis, due largely to the incompatibility between NMR detection and electrical conduction of electrochemistry. Here, we introduce a straightforward, easy-to-construct system that incorporates high-resolution (HR) in situ NMR spectroscopy with electrochemistry by using cylindrically symmetric interdigitated metal (Au) electrodes. The constructed system is simple to build, inexpensive, and robust. It requires with minimal setup time and can be used with conventional commercial probes without the need of any modifications to them. To demonstrate the feasibility and performance of the system, we used 1HNMR to monitor the reversible redox reaction of ferrocene and C-13 NMR to follow the electrooxidation reaction of methanol on a commercial ptru electrocatalyst. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.