Numerical methods in synthesis and analysis of electrochemical responses

Though literature reports the trends of the significant quantities of the responses for different potential controlled techniques for many different types of mechanisms, direct comparisons between experimental and theoretical responses are often necessary. For an experimenter who wants to calculate a theoretical response, numerical methods are particularly appealing. In particular, digital simulation methods based on finite difference expressions of the differential equations accounting for diffusion and kinetics of the electrode process are probably the simplest numerical techniques to use. Many different models have been proposed. Nonuniform space or space-time discretizations have been suggested to speed up the simulation procedure. As to the analysis of the response, more or less trivial treatments (filtering of noise, background subtraction, convolution or deconvolution procedures, etc.) can lead to signals where the significant quantities can be estimated more accurately. The qualitative and quantitative definition of the operative mechanism can be in part or completely computerized. A key point consists of some general optimization method, such as the Simplex.