Abstract
Most electrochemical sensing requires affordable, portable and easy-to-use electrochemical devices for use in point-of-care testing and resource-limited settings. This work presents the design and evaluates the analytical performance of a near-field communication (NFC) potentiostat, a flat card-sized electrochemical device containing a microchip for electrical analysis and an NFC antenna for smartphone connection. The NFC interface is a wireless connection between the microchip and smartphone to simplify measuring units and make the potentiostat into a passive operated device, running without a battery. The proposed potentiostat can perform the common electrochemical techniques including cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry with a current range and voltage range of ±20 µA and ±0.8 V. The performance of the NFC potentiostat is compared to a commercial benchtop potentiostat using ferricyanide as a standard solution. The results show that the NFC potentiostat is comparable to a commercial benchtop potentiostat for both cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry measurements. The application of the proposed potentiostat is demonstrated by measuring ascorbic acid concentration. As described, the NFC potentiostat, which is compatible with a smartphone, is low-cost, small in size and user-friendly. Thus, the device can be developed for on-site measurement to apply in various fields.
Highlights
Electrochemical sensing has been developed and is widely applied in various fields including food safety and control [1,2,3], environmental monitoring [4,5,6] and clinical diagnostics [7,8,9], since it offers many advantages such as high sensitivity and selectivity, rapid detection and small sample volume [10,11,12]
We demonstrate the design and performance of an near-field communication (NFC) potentiostat compared with a commercial benchtop potentiostat in chronoamperometry and cyclic voltammetry techniques
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Summary
Electrochemical sensing has been developed and is widely applied in various fields including food safety and control [1,2,3], environmental monitoring [4,5,6] and clinical diagnostics [7,8,9], since it offers many advantages such as high sensitivity and selectivity, rapid detection and small sample volume [10,11,12]. Some studies have developed inexpensive and open-source potentiostats that complement commercial laboratory potentiostats [18,19,20,21], but the instrument requires a computer to operate the detection process, analyze the data and display the results These devices limit the application for home-based testing and in resource-limited settings. With the rapid growth of smartphone users worldwide, which exceeds 3.5 billion in 2020, accounting for 45.4% of the world’s population and being projected to grow further in the few years [22], the development of smartphone coupling with potentiostats is an increasing trend for electrochemical sensing systems In these systems, smartphones can be connected with potentiostats through Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB or an audio port interface for supplying power, data transmission, data processing, result display and sharing [23]. Cai et al presented xenSTAT, which can connect to the phone via Bluetooth and can perform most electrochemical techniques [25]
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