Reactive Oxygen Species at Water-Hydrophobic Interfaces: How Controversy Advanced Understanding

Aqueous interfaces can support chemistry that differs markedly from bulk solutions. Reports that reactive oxygen species form at water-hydrophobic interfaces under ambient conditions have opened an exciting but controversial area of interfacial chemistry. Many objections have been raised, from chemical contaminants to instrumental artifacts and alternative reaction pathways. This Review examines how those challenges have reshaped the field. They have moved the discussion from whether unusual redox chemistry can occur at water interfaces to where reactive species originate, how they are detected, and which mechanisms operate in different experimental regimes.