A battery‐powered, microprocessor‐controlled, programmable function generator for field‐based stripping voltammetry with conventional and microsized electrodes

Abstract

Abstract Battery‐powered, complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) devices have been used to develop a programmable function generator. When used in conjunction with commercially available, battery‐powered potentiostats or electrometers and recording devices, the technique of field‐based direct current stripping voltammetry becomes available. The instrumental performance of a range of modular, battery‐powered instruments has been evaluated with conventional and microsized electrodes and compared with ac‐powered laboratory instruments using conventionally sized electrodes. Stripping experiments with the field‐based instrument and with microelectrodes can be carried out under linear potential sweep conditions because the limit of detection is similar to that obtained with transient techniques at conventional sized electrodes. Other simplifications to the instrumentation and voltammetric procedures that are valuable in field‐based studies (e.g., neither stirring nor deoxygenation of the solutions is required) also are achieved by using microelectrodes and are illustrated by the determination of copper in a river water sample.