Electrochemistry

Introduction

Electrochemistry plays a significant role in diverse research areas, such as organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, life sciences, engineering, and materials science. Research is therefore often highly interdisciplinary, and the range of available techniques and measurement procedures is vast.

Data Types

Conceptually, the main data type in electrochemistry consists of time series data containing fundamental electrical parameters such as voltage (potential) and current (current density), including the measurement time. For AC methods, also the frequency, the impedance and the phase angle are relevant. These data are most simply stored as CSV, but are often only available in non-standard file formats.

Additional techniques are often employed operando to gain deeper insights into measured charge-transfer processes and other non-measurable chemical processes occurring at electrodes, in electrolytes, or at interfaces, such as IR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, or diffraction methods. These data are often stored alongside electrochemical measurements.

Additionally, imaging data can be obtained from purely electrochemical techniques such as scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) or indirectly, when combined with other methods such as in situ electrochemical scanning tunneling microscopy (in situ STM). Further data evaluation can yield any kind of time series data or imaging data.

ELNs and Other Tools

For effective data management, tools should be selected at project or group level based on workflows. Because workflows are often method-specific, usage guidelines and metadata templates should be defined and documented in a data management plan (DMP). NFDI4Chem provides an RDMO template tailored to chemistry.

An electronic lab notebook (ELN) helps with day-to-day planning and structured documentation of experiments, and some also support data workflow management. For electrochemical data, ELNs must be flexible and customisable to meet diverse research requirements. At present, no ELN fully covers electrochemistry-specific needs, so researchers should choose the option that best fits their scope.

The ELN-Finder lists many options and the article on choosing an ELN provides further assistance. General-purpose ELNs can be found with the keyword "Physical chemistry":

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For specific domains, such as electrosynthesis, the Chemotion ELN might be an appropriate choice. Tools presented for other domains might also be applicable.

Publishing Data

Publishing research data, especially data underlying publications, is important for reproducibility and reuse. Research data repositories support FAIR publication. However, repositories specific to electrochemical data, such as BatteryArchive.org, remain scarce.

Challenges

Common challenges in electrochemistry and FAIR data stem from the wide variety of sub-disciplines, methods, and data types, many of which still lack standards. Some groups have established local workflows, but broader FAIR reporting requires community-wide initiatives such as Battery2030+ across different domains.