High-Throughput Electrochemistry Using Scanning Electrochemical Cells

The surge in interest surrounding accelerated materials discovery, coupled with growing efforts to implement the self-driving lab concept in electrochemistry research, highlights the importance of providing a comprehensive overview of the methods that can be integrated into such workflows. These span synthesis, characterization, and beyond. Since electrochemical characterization often constitutes the bottleneck in electrocatalyst, battery, and corrosion discovery workflows, we highlight highly versatile and high-throughput screening tools─namely, scanning droplet cells and scanning flow cells, which show great promise for use in autonomous research due to the ease of automation and coupling with other characterization techniques. However, designing an effective workflow around such an electrochemical screening step requires an informed choice of the material library preparation method. Thus, we present an overview of available high-throughput electrode preparation tools, including those that have not yet been demonstrated for electrocatalysts but show promise. Additionally, we distinguish between methods that allow for a seamless progression of workflow steps (direct methods) and those that require additional effort for electrode preparation (indirect methods). An overview of electrochemical screening approaches, as well as strategies to accelerate physicochemical characterization, is also provided, completing the picture of the high-throughput toolbox for workflow design. Finally, we showcase examples of electrochemical scanning methods incorporated into highly automated and autonomous electrochemical platforms, highlighting their promising functionality in the advent of fully automated and AI-guided research.