Mechanism of the Electrochemical Reduction of Persulfates and Hydrogen Peroxide

Electrochemical studies have shown that the reduction of persulfate and hydrogen peroxide is a two step mechanism, the first step occurs by electron transfer with the conduction band and the second step by hole injection with the valence band. It could be concluded from corresponding measurements performed with a semiconductor electrode that the electrochemical properties of these oxidizing agents have to be described by two instead of one redox (normal) potential. One normal potential is much lower and the other much larger than the theoretical value determined from thermodynamic data. These values are estimated as