This project, supported in the Analytical and Surface Chemistry Program, continues to advance applications in microelectrode technology. Owing to their small size and proportionately small time constant, high speed voltammetric responses can be generated at these electrodes for minute amounts of analyte at nanosecond time scales. In addition, coupling the detection of electrochemically stimulated light emission at microelectrode arrays has given rise to a novel high flux chemiluminescent probe of surface processes. During the tenure of this thirty- two month continuing grant, Professor Mark Wightman and his students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will use micro- and nanovoltammetric electrodes to prepare ultratrace-sensitive chromatographic detectors, probe processes associated with single molecule reactions, develop a novel source for high resolution imaging of surfaces, and generate long-lived electrochemi- luminescence radiation in a `solvent-less` medium. Microvoltammetric electrodes are micron- to nanometer-sized electrodes which can be used as detectors for trace amounts of analyte, and/or short lived species. Professor Wightman and his students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are advancing a new generation of these devices which can be implanted in body tissue, inside single cells, and are capable of monitoring very fast reaction processes. This technology will be applicable to measurements conducted in the environmental, advanced manufacturing, and biotechnology fields.
