Exploring the Balance between Faradaic and Non-Faradaic Processes in Organic Chemical Reactions at Plasma-Liquid Interfaces.

Electrochemistry can enable sustainable chemical manufacturing but is limited by the reactions possible with conventional metal electrodes. Plasma electrochemistry, which replaces a conventional solid electrode with plasma in electrochemical cells, opens new avenues for chemical synthesis by combining Faradaic and non-Faradaic processes at the plasma-liquid interface. To understand how plasma electrochemistry differs from conventional electrochemistry, we investigated plasma reactions with acrylonitrile, an industrially relevant molecule used as the precursor in the well-characterized electrosynthesis of adiponitrile.