Materials Science and Engineering, University of Brasov, Brasov
We present a very compact system for in-situ corrosion monitoring made up with a low cost, but powerful Cypress PSoC microcontroller. The method we have implemented is the small amplitude cyclic voltametry, which is one of the most appropriate methods for corrosion monitoring, usually performed by using large sized PGstat devices. Our system consists mainly of a very small device placed right near the three electrodes of the electrochemical cell, which performs all the controls needed to conduct the measurements, as well as partial data processing. It generates a linear ramp voltage signal and measures the current response of the electrochemical system. It performs some basic calculations, interprets the data and takes decisions to control the processes for long time corrosion monitoring. The data are digitally transmitted to a PC. The major advantages of our system are: it is very compact and cheap, the perturbations coming from the environment noise are strongly reduced because all the tasks of data acquisition and processing take place in a very small space of the electrochemical cell and it is very flexible, it’s firmware being upgradeable for different other electrochemical methods