Praise of mercury

Mercury is a truly unique electrode material, which due to its liquid state offers significant advantages, not accessible to solid electrodes. With normal, good laboratory procedures it has been and can be handled safely. It has broad range of applications in physical electrochemistry and electroanalytical chemistry. In this article three somewhat unusual examples of application of mercury electrode are presented: its use as a liquid junction-free reference electrode, as a miniature Langmuir trough for scanning tunneling microscopy and as a new tool for electrochemistry of biomacromolecules.