Potentiostat for use in electro-chemical experiments

Summary In many electro-chemical experiments it is desirable that one of the current-carrying electrodes of an electrolytic bath has a constant potential. This may be realized by manual control of the bath current. Owing to the sudden and unpredictable potential fluctuations of the electrode concerned, this is very difficult and even impossible in some special cases, e.g. when passivating an Fe-electrode in aqueous H₂SO₄. In addition there may be a considerable time-lag between the potential and the current fluctuations. The different types of potentiostats described so far seem to have too large a time-lag or/and too low a sensitivity for this purpose. The authors describe a potentiostat with proportional and integrating properties resulting in a stabilization of the potential within 1/2 mV in favourable sections of the potential current characteristic. Even with an electrode with a very steep potential current characteristic (e.g. the above mentioned Fe-electrode) the ripple never exceeds a few mV. The bath current, the maximum value of which is 30 mA, is the differential current of two electronic tubes. This type of circuit offers various advantages.