A Scalable 128-Channel, Time-Multiplexed Potentiostat for Parallel Electrochemical Experiments

Electrochemical experiments like chronoamperometry or cyclic voltammetry (CV) are essential in the research for novel bioelectrochemical systems. These experiments, executed by a potentiostat, are time-consuming which hinders research progression. To speed up those experiments, this work presents a potentiostat with 128 individual parallel stimulation and sensing channels. A channel architecture exploiting time division multiplexing is developed to minimize the hardware cost and area. Potential control is done in the digital domain using 128 individual Linear Quadratic Integral (LQI) controllers. The 128-channel potentiostat is implemented with Printed Circuit Board (PCB) technology and has 16x more channels than the state of the art low-cost potentiostats with a 4x lower cost-per-channel (5) and a 4x lower area-per-channel (93 mm2). Using parallelism, chronoamperometry experiments can be done 128x faster, while a conventional 1 mV s-1-CV can be done 72x faster by sampling instead of voltage sweeping.

Automated summary

In this study, a high-speed potentiostat with 128 individual channels was proposed, utilizing a channel architecture exploiting time division multiplexing to minimize hardware cost and area. Through parallelism, chronoamperometry experiments can be conducted 128 times faster, while sampling instead of voltage sweeping enables a 72 times faster operation of a conventional 1 mV s-1-Cyclic Voltammetry.