AbstractsChemistry

In general, it is not possible to bring two different phases into contact without setting up a difference of electrical potential between them bythe very act. This Is just as true for such little understood pairs as silk and rubber, as for the familiar example of a metal againstan aqueous solution of its salt.By a phase boundary potential, then, shall be meant, quite generally, the difference in electric potential existing between two practicallyimmiscible phases in contact with each other. This excludes liquid junction potentials, since these are set up at an unstable boundary betweenmiscible phases. Some writers have restricted the term to boundaries between immiscible liquids only, but it would seem preferableto use it in the wider sense defined above. [...]