Cyclic voltammetry

Okay kiddo, imagine you have a toy car that needs batteries to make it run. But you want to know how many batteries it needs and how fast it can go with different sets of batteries. This is a bit like cyclic voltammetry, where we want to understand how energy flows in and out of a material.

Instead of batteries, in cyclic voltammetry we use a special machine called a voltameter that measures the flow of electricity in and out of a material. We attach the material to a wire that connects it to the voltameter.

Now imagine you have a bathtub that you want to fill with water. You turn on the faucet and measure how fast the water is coming in with a cup. Once the bathtub is full, you turn off the faucet and measure how fast the water is going out with the same cup. This is a bit like how cyclic voltammetry works.

We start by injecting electricity into the material to see how much it can hold (like filling the bathtub). As we increase the amount of electricity, the material can only hold so much and then it starts to leak out (like the water overflowing the bathtub).

Next, we reverse the direction of the electricity flow and measure how much the material lets go of the electricity. This is like draining the bathtub and seeing how fast the water flows out.

We repeat this process over and over, each time measuring how much electricity flows in and out of the material. This helps us understand how the material behaves under different conditions, like how fast the toy car can go with different numbers of batteries.

By understanding how materials behave with electricity, we can use them to power devices or create new technologies. Just like how the toy car needs batteries to run, some devices need a material that can hold and release electricity in a specific way. And that's what we can learn with cyclic voltammetry!