When you want to prove a certain substance in a liquid, you cannot always do it in a laboratory. Because of that, PalmSens developed a portable potentiostat (Figure 1).
An advantage of a portable potentiostat is that it is easy to bring along, to measure something on location, for example when you want to know the concentration of lead in the surface water of a well.
Another benefit of a portable potentiostat is that you can easy make a laboratory setup. It is easy to connect the potentiostat to other devices.
How does a portable potentiostat work?
A portable potentiostat puts a potential on a certain surface (electrode). The amount of electrons on the surface is reduced or increased initiating electrochemical reactions. This can be used as a sensors. Every sensor has a certain sensitivity to the substance you are measuring. For this reason, there are many different sensors that react in a different ways to certain chemical substances.
Sometimes, a sensor can be used more times, but often sensors are disposable, so one-time use and the sensor is permanently changed by the reactions happening at the electrodes.
When is a portable potentiostat used?
A potentiostat is mainly used in electrochemistry. For example, when electrochemical researchers want to show how much lead is in the drinking water, or how much iron is in blood or investigate how rainwater affects the surface of a certain metal. With a portable potentiostat you can measure this in real without making a laboratory setup.
There are several types of portable potentiostats used by electrochemical researchers:
- Many researchers at a university or laboratory use a portable potentiostat to detect all sorts of substances in certain fluids (for example using the PalmSens4)
- There are also portable potentiostats that are only used to detect one particular substance. PalmSens, for this reason, makes customized portable potentiostats custom, so-called OEM potentiostats.
- The small portable EmStat potentiostat of PalmSens is designed to make simple measurements in different liquids.
Without associated software, you cannot do anything with your portable potentiostat. You want to see the measurements in a graph, the so-called voltammogram. PalmSens Portable Potentiostats are sold including their own easy-to-use software, which makes it easy to start (Figure 2a). We also provide an app for Android devices (Figure 2b). But you can also use all of the current spreadsheet software that is useful for creating charts.
Portable potentiostat prices
Portable potentiostats are usually very pricey. However, PalmSens managed to develop a series of portable potentiostats that are highly affordable, definitely with all the given specifications.