A method to probe electrochemically active material state in portable sensor applications

A new method allowing the simultaneous and automatic determination of potentiometric and impedimetric characteristics of an electrochemical cell is presented. This method is based on a computerized or micro-controlled feedback loop that conditions a potentiostat input signal as a function of its output signal. The embedding of this method in a portable sensor prototype is used to evaluate the versatility and usefulness of this new approach. As this method is active, it is used both for the electrochemical preparation of polyaniline coated electrodes and for their subsequent evaluation in pH-linked sensors such as an antibiotic sensor.