Rob Hillman is Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Leicester and, from January 2009, will be President of the International Society of Electrochemistry. He has been publishing with PCCP since its first year of existence. Prior to that he published regularly in its predecessor, Faraday Transactions, from the time he was a postgraduate student to the time he was the journal's Scientific Editor. He appreciates the rigorous refereeing process that, with the professional and author-oriented editorial service, leads to a high quality portfolio of papers across the broad discipline encompassed by the journal. 

This latest contribution to PCCP describes the combined use of electrochemical, acoustic wave and AFM imaging techniques to probe different aspects of the dynamics of electroactive films functionalised with crown ether ligands. Each of the techniques responds on the basis of different physical phenomena - electrochemical, acoustic and mechanical. Were the films to be homogeneous in structure, correlation of the different data sets would be straightforward and each would provide the same physical picture. The central message of the paper is that the films are inhomogeneous - comprising a dense inner region and a diffuse island-like outer region - such that the different techniques "see" different parts of the system. 

Physical and spectroscopic techniques are widely used to characterize electroactive films. Generally, correlation of dynamic and structural probes is based on the notion of film homogeneity; while this is acknowledged to be a rather idealized view, more sophisticated models are rarely available. The heterogeneous, multi-layer form found here is likely to be very common, particularly for thicker films used in practical devices; the new approach to analysis of film properties should find wide applicability.