Review of Newman's Analytical Series on Disk Electrodes

Abstract

Dr. John S. Newman, an expert and pioneer in electrochemical engineering, studied the electrical characteristics of disk electrodes extensively since the 1960s. Newman and his colleagues published the results in a series of articles in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society. This seminal series is consistent and well-written, and has been cited by many in electrochemistry and closely related fields. However, the articles, especially the later ones in the series, enjoined less familiarity in other fields, including biomedical engineering in which electrodes became widely used in neural stimulation. The purpose of this review is therefore to summarize Newman's work on disk electrodes together and provide a comprehensive understanding of the original articles. The review mainly focuses on the behaviors of interest to neural stimulation, namely the primary distribution, frequency dispersion, and the current step and voltage step responses. More mathematical details are supplemented to the original calculation to help the readers follow the derivation more easily. Several adjustments are made to Newman's original analyses. First, the equation sets are summarized into matrix form, which demonstrates the underlying structure of the electrode-electrolyte system. This formulation is helpful in showing the similarity and differences between different inputs discussed. Also, the normalization factors to give dimensionless variables have been slightly scaled by {\pi}/4 compared to the original articles, which endows them the representation of physical quantities. A consistent symbol naming system is used to refer to the results from different articles. Finally, some preliminary analyses are presented on the numeric accuracy of the solutions. The review will provide a comprehensive understanding of the original articles, especially in the context of neuroengineering applications.