The study of surface processes under electrochemical control in the presence of inertial cavitation

In some circumstances, the erosive effects of inertial (transient) cavitation have been usefully employed in the acceleration of chemical processes that are dependent on surface reactions. However, in other situations the erosion of materials can be detrimental. For example, problematic erosion/corrosion phenomena have been well documented. It will be demonstrated here that the employment of inertial cavitation can be beneficial to the study of surface processes and indeed has a number of advantages. These include rapid erosion and the removal of small quantities of the surface. To highlight these effects, high-temporal resolution of the re-oxidation transients produced from a passivated microelectrode placed within a cavitation cloud will be reported. These will be compared to the multi bubble sonoluminescence (MBSL) output of the cell. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.