A. Jenkins, "How does a battery work? A 220-year old puzzle in physics and chemistry", 25 Nov. 2020

Virtual seminars on materials, CICIMA, U. de Costa Rica, 2020
Abstract:
Volta invented the electrical battery in 1800. This device was soon reproduced and improved upon, but the debate about the mechanism responsible for what Volta called the battery's "electromotive force" (emf) drew the leading physicists and chemists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, including Biot, Davy, Ohm, Berzelius, A. C. Becquerel, Faraday, Helmholtz, Kelvin, Maxwell, Heaviside, Lodge, Ostwald, Nernst, and Langmuir. Recently, Hasok Chang, professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge, has emphasized that those debates were never fully resolved, but simply petered out as the quantum revolution of the 20th century shifted the focus of theoretical scientists in other directions.
We outline a dynamical picture of how the chemical energy stored in a battery generates the device's emf, which is a non-electrostatic phenomenon that drives charge separation and can maintain the circulation of current around a closed circuit when a load is attached to the battery’s terminals. We show that the electrochemical double layer at the electrode electrolyte interface can exhibit a rapid self-oscillation that can pump electrical current, thus accounting for the battery’s persistent conversion of chemical energy into electrical work. We connect this to the reported observations of slow self-oscillations in various electrochemical cells and suggest further experimental tests of our theory.
This dynamical picture of charge pumping should also be relevant for thermoelectric generators, solar cells, fuel cells, catalytic chemical reactions, and active ion channels in biological cell membranes. This is work in collaboration with theorists Robert Alicki (Gdansk) and David Gelbwaser-Klimovsky (MIT), and with experimentalist Elizabeth von Hauff (VU Amsterdam).
References:
1. R. Alicki, David Gelbwaser-Klimovsky, AJ and E. von Hauff, "Dynamical theory for the battery’s electromotive force", arXiv:2010.16400 [physics.chem-ph]
2. R. Alicki, David Gelbwaser-Klimovsky and AJ, "The leaking elastic capacitor as a model for active matter", arXiv:2010.05534 [physics.class-ph]
The full slides (including some skipped during the talk) are available here: drive.google.com/file/d/1nkvA...

[@adriangarciaeth]

Excellent content !! Keep posting