Standard electrode potential to produce an electric potential, Gibbs free energy Δ"G"° must be negative, in accordance with the following equation: where "n" is number of moles of electrons per mole of products and "F" is the Faraday constant, ~96485 C/mol. As such, the following rules apply: Thus in order to have a spontaneous reaction (ΔG° < 0), "E"° must be positive, where: where "E"° is the standard potential at the anode and "E"° is the standard potential at the cathode as given in the table of standard electrode potential. Standard electrode potential In electrochemistry, it is defined as the measure of the
Standard electrode potential is sufficient to calculate either one of the potentials. Therefore, standard electrode potential is commonly written as standard reduction potential. The electrode potential cannot be obtained empirically. The galvanic cell potential results from a "pair" of electrodes. Thus, only one empirical value is available in a pair of electrodes and it is not possible to determine the value for each electrode in the pair using the empirically obtained galvanic cell potential. A reference electrode, standard hydrogen electrode (SHE), for which the potential is "defined" or agreed upon by convention, needed to be established. In this case SHE is set to