A circuit based on the current feedback operational amplifier was constructed to accomplish on-line ohmic drop compensation in ultrafast cyclic voltammetry. Firstly, its characteristics were confirmed experimentally on dummy cells. Then the reduction of anthracene in acetonitrile, a classical test example with very fast electron-transfer kinet-ics, was examined to prove them too. The results showed that this circuit could afford excellent ohmic drop com-pensation so that the undistorted voltammograms up to 2.2 MVs-1 scan rate can be recorded, and 2.5 MVs-1 if 5% error is tolerated.
A novel idea of in-cell iR compensation was proposed by using a four-electrode electrochemical system, which was consisted of two working electrodes, one reference electrode (RE) and one auxiliary electrode (AE). One of the two working electrodes was called the auxiliary working electrode (AWE), which was directly connected to the ground. Another working electrode was used as a regular working electrode (WE) for electrochemical testing. The reference electrode was set in a frit close to the AWE for potential sampling. The other electrodes, WE, RE and AE, were connected to a conventional potentiostat of three-electrode system for electrochemical measurements. A linear narrow electrochemical cell was designed for setting AE at one end and AWE with RE at another end, and setting WE in between AE and AWE. In this way, a positive feedback potential was generated at the working electrode from the solution resistance and the current flow in the solution. An formal iR compensation over 100%, as high as 500%, had been achieved without potential oscillation. The electrochemical cell design, the principle of the in-cell iR compensation, and the preliminary voltammetric characterization by using the redox reaction of ferrocyanide anions were reported.
A unique method for preparing a coaxial dual-microelectrode sensor by vaporizing the nano-thickness Au layer on the DNA modified carbon fiber micro-column electrode was illustrated. The dual-electrode showed particular merit for determination in biological systems.
A universal simulator capable of simulating virtually any user-defined electrochemical/chemical problems in one-dimensional diffusion geometry was developed based on an exponentially expanding grid modification of the existing network approach. Some generalized reaction-diffusion governing equations of an arbitrary electrochemical/chemical process were derived, and program controlled automatic generation of the corresponding PSPICE netlist file was realized. On the basis of the above techniques, a universal simulator package was realized, which is capable of dealing with arbitrarily complex electrochemical/chemical problems with one-dimensional diffusion geometry such as planar diffusion, spherical diffusion, cylindrical diffusion and rotational disk diffusion-convection processes. The building of such a simulator is easy and thus it would be very convenient to have it updated for simulations of newly raised electrochemical problems.
