A USB-controlled potentiostat/galvanostat for thin-film battery characterization

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a low-cost USB-controlled potentiostat/galvanostat which can measure or apply potentials in the range of ±8V, and measure or apply currents ranging from nanoamps to max. ±25 mA. Precision is excellent thanks to the on-board 20-bit D/A-convertor and 22-bit A/D-convertors. The dual control modes and its wide potential range make it especially suitable for battery characterization. As an example use case, measurements are presented on a lithium-ion test cell using thin-film anatase TiO2 as the working electrode. A cross-platform Python program may be used to run electrochemical experiments within an easy-to-use graphical user interface. Designed with an open hardware philosophy and using open-source tools, all the details of the project (including the schematic, PCB design, microcontroller firmware, and host computer software) are freely available, making custom modifications of the design straightforward.

Sponsored Libre Research Agreements to Create Free and Open Source Software and Hardware

“…It is noteworthy that in most PSRAs in the IP section there is some mention that the sponsor recognizes that the University has an obligation to utilize the knowledge and technology generated by their own research in a manner which maximize societal benefit and economic development and which provides for the education of graduate and undergraduate students. There is substantial evidence that releasing innovations and inventions using open source licenses can indeed maximizes societal benefits [5,[60][61][62] as it leads to all of the benefits in FOSS [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] and FOSH [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] development discussed above. As the open source development of digital fabrication tools such as 3-D printers, mills and laser cutters [31][32][33][34] are coupled with software that enables convenient customization [63] and free public resources for open source design exchange [64,65], peer production can emerge [66].…”

“…The scientific community has been quick to adopt libre hardware as it reduces costs by 90-99%, while improving control and allowing customizable features [41][42][43]. In addition to traditional publishing, new academic journals such as HardwareX (publishing libre hardware designs from potentiostat/galvanostats [44] to a microsyringe autosamplers [45]) and the Journal of Open Hardware, which covered the annual Gathering for Open Science Hardware [46] and libre hardware-based business models [47]. Some libre hardware designs have been shown to be growing at an exponential rate [41].…”

A low-cost and high-precision scanning electrochemical microscope built with open source tools

“…These potentiostats can also only measure high microampere currents. Other custom built potentiostats offer low microampere measurement capability and their cost range is $80-100 [14,14]. In building the custom SECM in this project, the DSTAT potentiostat was chosen due to its superior low current (600fA) measurement capability [15] and it still has a moderate cost of around $120.…”

Miniaturization of Cyclic Voltammetry Electronic Systems for Remote Biosensing

“…Therefore, there are researchers developing low cost and custom made potentiostats [7][8][9] and in some cases also including a graphic user interface (GUI) to display the data and change the settings. This GUI is usually developed to work on a PC through a USB connection [11][12][13], while other approaches are targeting the communication to mobile phones and their operational systems (e.g. Android OS) [10].…”

“…The use of CV as a measuring technique has been highly explored, and so, the most common small, integrated or low-cost approximations of these equipment are based on the CV feature [9,11,[14][15][16]. Additionally, the CV is a very useful technique in the identification of oxidation-reduction (Redox) processes, an can be a meaningful tool for the measuring of portable biosensors [10,11,13,14,[16][17][18][19][20]. The present work proposes the design and assembling of a low cost potentiostat as an alternative to develop a low cost miniaturized system for remote biosensing, which is able to run cyclic voltammetry measurements.…”