Solvation can significantly influence electrochemical reactions, affecting everything from the stability of battery materials to their charging and discharging behaviors, to the energy barriers governing electrocatalytic reactions. In this tutorial, we’ll discuss how solvation impacts reactions, focusing on practical ways to experimentally quantify solvation effects. We begin by linking the Gibbs free energy of ion solvation to redox potential, highlighting the challenges of converting reference electrode–based measurements into absolute values relative to the vacuum state. We then discuss strategies for separating enthalpic and entropic contributions to solvation, with particular focus on calorimetry as a tool for directly measuring enthalpy. We’ll also examine recent challenges in using temperature-dependent measurements to isolate solvation entropy. We close by highlighting how these approaches can inform a range of fundamental and applied research questions in electrochemistry and materials science. No matter your research angle—from batteries to catalysis—this session will help you translate solvation thermodynamics into actionable insights that drive discovery.
