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Tables of absolute potentials of aqueous redox couples of elements and of reference electrodes

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Abstract

Electrochemical potentials are conventionally referred to that of the standard hydrogen electrode (SHE) arbitrarily as zero. More than two centuries after Volta, the author demonstrated for the first time, a new simple linear relation between the gaseous ionization potentials (I) and the aqueous standard redox potentials using the existing data for the elements of various groups in the Periodic Table. All these straight lines converged to one point at I = 0, yielding the absolute potential of SHE as 4.20 (± 0.03) V for the (1/2)H2/H+ equilibrium, and for halogens (Gp. VII), the value was found to be 2.87 (± 0.01) V for the (1/2)H2/H− equilibrium. This enabled establishing the absolute potentials provided in the Tables here.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks Dr. T. Navratil for his help and advice in formatting the manuscript and the two reviewers for helpful suggestions. This work is dedicated to the memory of the author’s late husband, Dr. Michael Heyrovsky.

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  1. Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague, Czech Republic

    Rajalakshmi Heyrovská

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  1. Rajalakshmi Heyrovská
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Correspondence to Rajalakshmi Heyrovská.

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Heyrovská, R. Tables of absolute potentials of aqueous redox couples of elements and of reference electrodes. Monatsh Chem 150, 391–393 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00706-019-2373-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00706-019-2373-5

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