At the invitation of Professor Xingjiu Huang, the director of the Research Center for Biomimetic Functional Materials and Sensing Devices, Institute of Intelligent Machines (IIM), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor Richard Guy Compton from University of Oxford visited IIM on August 22nd and gave a lecture titled “Nanoparticles Electrochemistry”.

　　With the widely use of nanoparticle products, lots of nanoparticles have been released into natural waters, which has potential harmful effects to human beings and environments. Therefore, it is very important and urgent to develop simple and effective technology to detect nanoparticles in water. Based on fundamental electrochemical theory, Prof. Compton develops a new method to detect nanoparticles in water using anodic particle coulometry. This method can not only determine nanoparticles but also effectively characterize the size, size distribution, concentration, and congregation of nanoparticles. At present, Prof. Compton and his group have successfully used this method to determine and characterize Ag, Cu, Ni, and Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles in water. Then, Dr. Christopher from Compton’s group made a report titled The Anodic Stripping Voltammetry of Silver Nanoparticles: The Influence of Agglomeration and Measuring Nanoparticle Surface Energies. More than 40 researchers and graduates from Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Science and Technology of China attended the lecture and the heated discussion made a very lively atmosphere.

　　Prof. Compton is a famous scientist in Electrochemistry. He is a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry. Prof. Compton has broad interests in both fundamental and applied electrochemistry and electroanalysis including nanochemical aspects. He has published more than 1200 papers (H-index= 67) in electrochemistry related fields. He is the Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Electrochemistry Communications which holds the highest impact factor in the field of electrochemistry.