Flexible Potentiostat Readout Circuit for Electrochemical Sensors
Abstract
Personalised health wearables reach their full potential when sensors are integrated with its interfacing system. Recent approaches have primarily focused on the development of readout circuits limited to the electrochemical chip and basic signal conditioning components. However, integrating a readout circuit with a microcontroller offers significant advantages such as enhanced data processing capabilities. Other than incorporating a microcontroller within the readout circuit, we also designed the entire potentiostat system on a flexible polyimide substrate, making it suitable for wearable applications. In this work, we describe the design, fabrication and testing of a flexible potentiostat readout circuit for electrochemical sensors. The core of the interface circuit is two chips, a microcontroller ATSAMD21G18A-MUT (Microchip Technology) and a programmable analog front-end integrated circuit from Texas Instruments. These chips along with a voltage regulator, resistors and capacitors were integrated onto a single, flexible, printed circuit board. To verify the functionality of the flexible readout circuit, it was connected to an electrochemical sensor and Cyclic Voltammetry (CV) was performed. The separation between peaks (ΔEp), were measured using the flexible board and compared with a commercial potentiostat (Emstat Pico). EmStat Pico has ΔEp = 0.133V, while our potentiostat produced ΔEp of 0.132V, indicating minimal variations with the same PCB layout, despite using different substrates. The standard rate constant (Ks) of electron transfer can also be obtained from CV and was measured to be 0.0037 for the rigid PCB and 0.0035 for the flexible PCB.
Keywords
References
P. Escobedo, L. Manjakkal, M. Ntagios, and R. Dahiya, “Flexible Potentiostat Readout Circuit Patch for Electrochemical and Biosensor Applications,” FLEPS 2020 - IEEE International Conference on Flexible and Printable Sensors and Systems, pp. 20–23, 2020, doi: 10.1109/FLEPS49123.2020.9239515.
K. Nam, G. Choi, H. Kim, M. Yoo, and H. Ko, “A Potentiostat Readout Circuit with a Low-Noise and Mismatch-Tolerant Current Mirror Using Chopper Stabilization and Dynamic Element Matching for Electrochemical Sensors,” Applied Sciences 2021, Vol. 11, Page 8287, vol. 11, no. 18, p. 8287, Sep. 2021, doi: 10.3390/APP11188287.
I. Jeerapan and S. Khumngern, “Printed Devices for Wearable Biosensors: Laboratory to Emerging Markets,” IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics, vol. 2, no. 5, pp. 1–1, 2023, doi: 10.1109/jflex.2023.3272624.
H. Zhao et al., “Recent advances in flexible and wearable sensors for monitoring chemical molecules,” Nanoscale, vol. 14, no. 5, pp. 1653–1669, Feb. 2022, doi: 10.1039/D1NR06244A.
A. Vanhooydonck, T. Caers, M. Parrilla, P. Delputte, and R. Watts, “Achieving High-Precision, Low-Cost Microfluidic Chip Fabrication with Flexible PCB Technology,” Micromachines (Basel), vol. 15, no. 4, p. 425, Apr. 2024, doi: 10.3390/MI15040425/S1.
O. S. Hoilett, J. F. Walker, B. M. Balash, N. J. Jaras, S. Boppana, and J. C. Linnes, “Kickstat: A coin-sized potentiostat for high-resolution electrochemical analysis,” Sensors (Switzerland), vol. 20, no. 8, Apr. 2020, doi: 10.3390/s20082407.
I. C. Ezema Ike-Eze et al., “An Overview of Flame Retardants in Printed Circuit Boards for LEDs and other Electronic Devices,” J. Mater. Environ. Sci, vol. 2023, no. 4, pp. 410–420, 2023, [Online]. Available: http://www.jmaterenvironsci.com
Y. Wang et al., “Review—Flexible and Stretchable Electrochemical Sensing Systems: Materials, Energy Sources, and Integrations,” J Electrochem Soc, vol. 167, no. 3, p. 037573, Mar. 2020, doi: 10.1149/1945-7111/AB7117.
R. Shi, S. Wang, Z. Xia, L. Lu, and M. Wong, “Fluorinated Metal-Oxide Thin-Film Transistors for Circuit Implementation on a Flexible Substrate,” IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 58–63, Dec. 2021, doi: 10.1109/JFLEX.2021.3140044.
C. Choi, H. Seung, and D.-H. Kim, “Bio-Inspired Electronic Eyes and Synaptic Photodetectors for Mobile Artificial Vision,” IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 76–87, Mar. 2022, doi: 10.1109/JFLEX.2022.3162169.
J. Song and F. Yan, “Applications of Organic Electrochemical Transistors in Flexible Bioelectronics,” IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 88–97, Jun. 2022, doi: 10.1109/JFLEX.2022.3179674.
T. E. Paterson et al., “Monitoring of hand function enabled by low complexity sensors printed on textile,” Flexible and Printed Electronics, vol. 7, no. 3, p. 035003, Jul. 2022, doi: 10.1088/2058-8585/AC7DD1.
R. R. Nair, “Glucose sensing and hybrid instrumentation based on printed organic electrochemical transistors,” Flexible and Printed Electronics, vol. 5, no. 1, p. 015001, Jan. 2020, doi: 10.1088/2058-8585/AB63A0.
L. Mo et al., “Full printed flexible pressure sensor based on microcapsule controllable structure and composite dielectrics,” Flexible and Printed Electronics, vol. 6, no. 1, p. 014001, Mar. 2021, doi: 10.1088/2058-8585/ABE842.
W. Zhao, S. Tian, L. Huang, K. Liu, and L. Dong, “The review of Lab-on-PCB for biomedical application,” Electrophoresis, vol. 41, no. 16–17, pp. 1433–1445, Sep. 2020, doi: 10.1002/ELPS.201900444.
J. Yao et al., “A Portable Potentiostat for Three-Electrode Electrochemical Sensor,” Journal of Physics: Conference Series PAPER • OPEN ACCESS Journal of Physics: Conference Series, vol. 1550, p. 42049, 2020, doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/1550/4/042049.
O. Alao, “(PDF) Online condition monitoring of Lithium-ion and Lead acid batteries for renewable energy applications.” Accessed: Jan. 17, 2023. [Online]. Available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333403369_Online_condition_monitoring_of_Lithium-ion_and_Lead_acid_batteries_for_renewable_energy_applications
J. Cook, “SIMstat: Hardware Design Considerations for Implementing a Low-Cost, Portable Potentiostat,” 2020.
S. D. Adams, E. H. Doeven, K. Quayle, and A. Z. Kouzani, “MiniStat: Development and Evaluation of a Mini-Potentiostat for Electrochemical Measurements,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 31903–31912, 2019, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2902575.
D. M. Jenkins, B. E. Lee, S. Jun, J. Reyes-De-Corcuera, and E. S. McLamore, “ABE-Stat, a Fully Open-Source and Versatile Wireless Potentiostat Project Including Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy,” J Electrochem Soc, vol. 166, no. 9, pp. B3056–B3065, 2019, doi: 10.1149/2.0061909jes.
L. E. Sebar, L. Iannucci, E. Angelini, S. Grassini, and M. Parvis, “Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy System Based on a Teensy Board,” IEEE Trans Instrum Meas, vol. 70, 2021, doi: 10.1109/TIM.2020.3038005.
S. A. Perdomo et al., “SenSARS : A Low-Cost Portable Electrochemical Diagnostics of SARS-CoV-2 Infections,” IEEE Trans Instrum Meas, vol. 70, pp. 1–10, 2021.
L. Stratmann, “EMStat Pico: An Electrochemical System On Module for Integration of Standard Analysis Methods with a Minimum of Development Effort,” 2019.
H. Shamkhalichenar, C. J. Bueche, and J. W. Choi, “Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Technology for Electrochemical Sensors and Sensing Platforms,” Biosensors, vol. 10, no. 11. NLM (Medline), Oct. 30, 2020. doi: 10.3390/bios10110159.
A. A. Zainuddin, “Integrated electrochemical and mass biosensor for early dengue detection,” 2020, Accessed: Nov. 18, 2022. [Online]. Available: http://studentrepo.iium.edu.my/handle/123456789/10088
A. Benoudjit, “A STABLE SOLID CONTACT TRANSDUCER AND IONOPHORE-FREE ALL-SOLID-STATE AMMONIUM ION-SELECTIVE ELECTRODE FOR MOBILE SENSOR APPLICATION IN AQUEOUS MEDIA,” 2021.
D. Plausinaitis, L. Sinkevicius, U. Samukaite-Bubniene, V. Ratautaite, and A. Ramanavicius, “Evaluation of electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance based sensor modified by uric acid-imprinted polypyrrole,” Talanta, vol. 220, p. 121414, Dec. 2020, doi: 10.1016/J.TALANTA.2020.121414.
A. A. Zainuddin et al., “Development of integrated electrochemical-quartz crystal microbalance biosensor arrays: Towards ultrasensitive, multiplexed and rapid point-of-care dengue detection,” in BIODEVICES 2019 - 12th International Conference on Biomedical Electronics and Devices, Proceedings; Part of 12th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies, BIOSTEC 2019, SciTePress, 2019, pp. 220–227. doi: 10.5220/0007523802200227.
Texas Instruments, “LMP91000 Sensor AFE System: Configurable AFE Potentiostat for Low-Power Chemical- Sensing Applications,” 2014. [Online]. Available: www.ti.com
E. Wernicki et al., “Preparation and characterization of nano-solder paste with high nanoparticle loading and their thermal and printing properties,” Mater Chem Phys, vol. 297, p. 127399, Mar. 2023, doi: 10.1016/J.MATCHEMPHYS.2023.127399.
E. Griffith and S. P. Lim, “Evolution and Applications of Fine-Feature Solder Paste Printing for Heterogeneous Integration,” International Symposium on Microelectronics, vol. 2021, no. 1, pp. 000362–000367, Oct. 2021, doi: 10.4071/1085-8024-2021.1.000362.
“Figure 1. Cyclic polarograms showing effect of charge transfer coefficient, a”.
I. Lavagnini, R. Antiochia, and F. Magno, “An Extended Method for the Practical Evaluation of the Standard Rate Constant from Cyclic Voltammetric Data”, doi: 10.1002/elan.200302851.
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Informatics (IJEEI)
ISSN 2089-3272
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.