ACEstat: A DIY Guide to Unlocking the Potential of Integrated Circuit Potentiostats for Open-Source Electrochemical Analysis

Abstract

Miniaturization of analytical instrumentation is paramount to enabling convenient in-field sensing. The recent thrust in potentiostat miniaturization for electrochemical sensing and general use has led to the development of commercial application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) that pack all the power of a benchtop instrument into one 5 mm × 5 mm chip. While the capabilities of these integrated circuits far exceed those of open-source potentiostats in the literature, the activation barrier for their implementation requires extensive electrical and software engineering expertise to overcome. In order to more rapidly bring the utility of ASIC potentiostats to researchers, we present a low size, weight, power, and cost (Low SWaP-C) Army Corps of Engineers potentiostat (ACEstat) based on the widely available ADuCM355 offered by Analog Devices. This potentiostat is a streamlined and fully programmable device that leverages industry-leading integrated hardware to perform electrochemical measurements such as cyclic voltammetry, pulse voltammetry, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The ACEstat enables control over a wide range of test parameters and displays results through an intuitive, open-source graphical user interface available on mobile devices and computers. In this report, we present an approachable, do-it-yourself guide to unlocking the capabilities of this integrated circuit potentiostat by outlining the fabrication and programming details necessary to facilitate electroanalysis. Furthermore, we demonstrate the practicality of this device by detecting 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) in water at sub-mg/L detection limits, highlighting its potential for in-field use.