The Spontaneous Electron-Mediated Redox Processes on Sprayed Water Microdroplets.

Water is considered as an inert environment for the dispersion of many chemical systems. However, by simply spraying bulk water into microsized droplets, the water microdroplets have been shown to possess a large plethora of unique properties, including the ability to accelerate chemical reactions by several orders of magnitude compared to the same reactions in bulk water, and/or to trigger spontaneous reactions that cannot occur in bulk water. A high electric field (∼10 V/m) at the air-water interface of microdroplets has been postulated to be the probable cause of the unique chemistries.

Spontaneous and Simultaneous Oxidation and Reduction of -Quinones in Water Microdroplets.

Microdroplet chemistry has been an emerging new field for its large plethora of unique properties, among which an especially intriguing one is the strong oxidizing and reducing powers. The hydroxide ion in water microdroplets is considered to split into a hydroxyl radical and an electron at the air-water interface, and the former is responsible for the oxidizing capability while the latter is responsible for the reducing power, making a unity of opposites. However, to date there are only two examples showing that oxidation and reduction occur simultaneously to the same substrates, which might be a result of the redox properties of the substrate .