Potentiodynamic Setup Parameters

A practical bound on the Scan Rate is 5 mV/s. Higher Scan Rates may run, but yield unreliable data because the potentiostat’s compensation and filtering are set for long time constants. Custom scripts may allow Scan Rates of 1 V/s or more. A lower bound on the Scan Rate is given by the minimum Step Size divided by the longest Sample Period. For scans shorter than 2 V, the slowest Scan Rate is 52.1 nV/s or 0.1875 mV/hour. Multiply these limits by four for scans longer than 2 V.

The Sample Period sets the length of a step. The height of a step depends on both the Scan Rate and the Sample Period. Calculate the Step Size and the Number of Points in the scan from:

Step Size = Scan Rate × Sample Period

Number of Points = Scan Range / Step Size

The Step Size is rounded to the resolution of the D/A converter making the steps. For scans shorter than 2 V, the resolution is 1/32 mV/bit. For scans longer than 2 V, the resolution is 1/8 mV. A typical Step Size for a potentiodynamic scan is between 0.1 and 1 mV/step. If the step size has to be rounded to fit the resolution of the D/A converter, the sample period is also adjusted so that the scan rate is correct. The Number of Points must be less than 262 143.With more points, the experiment aborts just before the scan phase of the sequence. The units used for the Sample Period are seconds. The lowest sample period we recommend is 0.1 second. The longest sample period allowed is 715 seconds.