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

Michael Straker,Kara Green,Birol Ozturk,Mehmet V. Yigit,Peker Milas,Ilyas Unlu,Taha Yildirim,Nafetalai Fifita,Michael Guy,Alperen Guver

doi:10.1016/j.ohx.2019.e00082

Abstract

Abstract A low-cost Scanning Electrochemical Microscope (SECM) was built with a 0.6 pA current measurement capability potentiostat and submicron resolution motorized stage, using open source software and hardware tools. The high performance potentiostat with a Python graphical user interface was built based on an open source project. Stepper motors, Arduino controller, a manual XY micromanipulator stage, 3D printed couplers and gears were used in building the motorized stage. An open source motor control software was used for moving the motorized stage with high precision. An inverted microscope was utilized for viewing a standard microelectrode while scanning. The setup was tested in the formation of a map of electrochemical signals from an array of pores on a parafilm membrane.

Highlights

There is an increasing interest in manufacturing custom laboratory research instruments with the simplified tools developed by the open source community
We have demonstrated controlling the motorized stage Arduino board through Python commands and in future upgrades, the motorized stage commands will be sent to the Arduino board motor controller through a single
The steady current increase in both experiments was attributed to nonspecific adsorption of poly Thymine (polyT) 208 and poly Adenine (polyA) onto the remaining available sites on the gold electrode surface

Summary

Introduction

There is an increasing interest in manufacturing custom laboratory research instruments with the simplified tools developed by the open source community. 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. In this experiment, the goal was the detection of polyA via monitoring the hybridization of polyA and polyT via Watson-Crick base-pairing.

Discussion

Conclusions