GaneStat—A comprehensive design and modular analysis of portable, low-cost, and high-accuracy potentiostat

Abstract

Electrochemical research has been developing with the advancement of laboratory equipment and sophisticated technologies. One of which is the portable potentiostat, which has been utilized to analyze various samples and help characterize their electrochemical properties. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive design and modular analysis of our proposed potentiostat called GaneStat. The proposed potentiostat has a low cost, portable, and high accuracy with battery-powered and electrical overstress circuit protection. The proposed analog front end of the potentiostat consists of several modules such as unipolar-to-bipolar converter (UBC), buffer, current-to-voltage converter (CVC), bipolar-to-unipolar converter (BUC), two-stage sallen key low-pass filter, and ADC input protection unit (AIPC). A maximum wide dynamic range of 98.95 dB provides flexibility in terms of current measurement. The potentiostat is also equipped with a dedicated power management circuit and an overstress protection circuit. Multi mode measurements are provided in our system for Cyclic voltammetry (CV), differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), Linear Sweep Voltammetry (LSV), and Chronoamperometry (CA) experiments with preliminary test on redox probe solution to validate the performance of the device. The final design occupies relatively small space of 6.95cm × 6.85 cm × 3.26 cm with 83.1 gr of weight, including the battery and the case. The potentiostat operates with sweep voltage within ±2.5 V with a 1.2 mV resolution, and it can measure current from 10 nA to 10 mA with 0.53 nA and 0.3 μ A resolutions, respectively. The potentiostat costs only $98.55 for the prototyping. This work is useful for laboratory applications in chemical, pharmacy and medical industries.