397 J. Electroanal. Chem., 324 (1992) 397-404 Elsevier Sequoia %A., Lmsanne JEC 01889 Short communication A simple method for evaluating the current in the cyclic voltammogram for reversible systems T. Suzuki, I. Mori, H. Nagamoto, M.M. Ito and H. Inoue Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONML of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113 (Japan) (Received 17 June 1991; in revised form 11 October 1991) INTRODUCHON Cyclic voltammetry is widely used to obtain basic information about electrode reactions, and quite a few studies on the theoretical analysis of cyclic voltammo- grams have been reported due to the complexity of the theoretical treatment. Matsuda and Ayabe [ll studied theoretically the cyclic voltammogram for reversible systems. In their study, the following diffusion equations were used to express the concentrations of oxidized and reduced species. dc, d2c, - = D,,,- dt dx2 (1) Their initial conditions are ~~~(0, x> = 0 and ~~(0, x) = ce, and their boundary conditions are cre&, ml= 0 and co&, m) = co, and on an electrode surface, i.e., at x = 0, D kd dcox I red dx -=-DOX-=_ dx AnF (3) The resulting expression for the electrode current. I, is as follows: Z = AnFC,mx( at) (4) where a is nFv/RT, A the surface area of a planar electrode, n the number of electrons transferred, F the Faraday constant, v the sweep rate, D the diffusion coefficient, R the gas constant, and T the temperature. The value of x(at) was obtained by numerical integration of the Volterra integral equations [2], and its 0022-0728/92/$05.00 0 1992 - Elsevier Sequoia S.A. All rights reserved