Mohsin Ahmad Bhat

Mechanistic aspects of nitrate ion reduction on silver electrode: estimation of O–NO2− bond dissociation energy using cyclic voltammetry

Voltammetric investigations of mechanistic aspects and estimation of thermo-chemical parameters of nitrate ion reduction at silver electrode, in alkaline medium are reported. The activation barrier determined from cyclic voltammetry fits a quadratic relation rather than the expected Butler-Volmer kinetics. Intrinsic barrier calculations show that the reduction of nitrate ion on silver follows a concerted mechanism, involving electron transfer initiated bond cleavage, followed by chemical reaction. The bond dissociation energy for the O–NO2− bond was estimated to be 48.40 kcal mol−1, which matches well with the reported value of 47.5 kcal mol−1, determined from photodissociation experiments.

Electrochemical Investigations on Pd2+ plus Benzoquinone in Imidazolium-Based Room Temperature Ionic Liquids: A Step Towards Greener Wacker Catalysis

Electrochemical investigations on Pd2+ plus benzoquinone (BQ) in 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate ([BMIM][BF4]) are reported. The presented investigations establish that presence of BQ enhances the electroreduction of Pd2+, and hence electrochemically assisted Pd2+ plus BQ system in [BMIM][BF4] can be used as clean green alternative to conventional Wacker-type catalytic systems wherein the BQ as terminal oxidant can be regenerated electrochemically.