Chapter 2 - Historical Overview of Electrochemical Discharges

Abstract

The history of electrochemical discharges can be written as a succession of rediscoveries of the same phenomenon. Electrochemical discharges were first used by physicists in the middle of the nineteenth century, as a light source with a rich spectrum, and then as nonlinear electrical components by electrical engineers in the beginning of the twentieth century. They were rediscovered in the middle of the last century by chemists and used as a source of nonfaradaic electrochemical reactions before being applied to micromachining and surface engineering in the second half of the twentieth century. The latest development in this field is the application of electrochemical discharges to the synthesis of nanoparticles. Each of these applications is actually hosted in different fields of science and engineering. This explains why the electrochemical discharge phenomenon was rediscovered several times and only later related to earlier observations reported in other fields. This chapter reviews the history of electrochemical discharges from their discovery to today's state-of-the-art knowledge from a multidisciplinary perspective.