Hello,
I am pretty new to the Arduino (bought one about 2 weeks ago and have been playing). I have an idea for my first real project and I just want to make sure it is feasible. I am a chemist with little background in electrical work/theory, so I wanted to see if this is plausible before I invest.
I want to perform simple cyclic voltammetry using a two-electrode setup. The simplest case is a capacitor; this is what I will focus on first. For basic cyclic voltammetry, I need to apply a potential ramp to a certain voltage (will be 1 V in my case), and then back to 0 at the same speed; this cycle should repeat as long as the experiment runs (potential vs. time should be a bunch of triangles).
While this is happening, I need to measure the current going from one capacitor plate to the other. The interesting data will be the current vs. potential (which should be nearly rectangular for the case of a capacitor).
My initial thoughts are to use a DAC (MCP4725 12-Bit) to convert the PWM output voltage from the arduino to an analog voltage, which I should be able to ramp up and down and certain rates with programming.
To detect the current between plates (which will be small, from 1E-6 to 1E-3 A), I was thinking to link the capacitor terminals with a uCurrent (http://www.adafruit.com/products/882), which should be able to accurately detect currents that small. The arduino can then read the voltage output from uCurrent, and I can convert it back to a current.
I know I am not really designing much, just putting other designs together to meet my needs, but this would help me a lot to be able to do these measurements at home!
Does this sound feasible? Any glaring logical faults?
Thanks for any advice!!