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Posts by Alex Peroff

  • A practical guide to choosing a potentiostat

    PotentiostatsAre you looking to purchase a new potentiostat for your research lab?  Whether you’re a new faculty, veteran electrochemist, graduate student, or industrial chemist, finding the right potentiostat can be difficult.  Understanding specifications such as potential and current range is reasonably straight forward, but what about compliance voltage, ADC inputs, input impedance, and CMRR?  Are these important?  How will you know the optimal potentiostat specifications for an experiment you’ve never performed?  Rest assured.  In this article, we hope to debunk some of these specifications and provide you with real information you need when deciding which potentiostat to purchase.

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  • A Friend We Will Miss – Honoring Professor Dennis Johnson

    This past year, on March 11, 2019, Professor Dennis C. Johnson of Iowa State University passed away.  His passing deeply saddens the Pine Research team as Dennis played an integral part in our early efforts to develop electrochemical instrumentation.   In the mid-1960s, Dennis was a graduate student and part of Professor Stanley Brukenstein’s team of electrochemists at the University of Minnesota who were doing novel research on the theory and application of rotating ring-disk electrodes (RRDEs).  The Minnesota team (which also included fellow graduate student Duane Napp and visiting scientist John Albery from Oxford University) was building upon earlier RRDE research performed in Russia, and the team’s efforts helped launch the RRDE as one of the primary tools for modern electroanalytical research.

    Dennis Johnson at Pine Research Booth

    Dennis Johnson at Pine Research Booth

    In subsequent years, Dennis and Duane collaborated with the owner of Pine Instrument Company, Ted Hines, to construct several early RRDE instruments.  Dennis and Duane also worked with Ted in the design and commercialization of a special bipotentiostat circuit which allowed independent control of the disk and ring potentials.  After Dennis became a professor at Iowa State University, he and his graduate students remained directly involved in the commercial production of rotating electrodes, playing a key role in the area of quality control.  As demand for rotating electrodes increased, it remained important that each individual rotating electrode be inspected and tested by a qualified electrochemist.  Dennis and his students at Iowa State did much of this early testing, and to this very day, rotating electrodes from Pine Research are tested according to his methods in some cases, these tests are still performed by scientists who were originally trained in his laboratory.

    Dennis Johnson’s contributions to Pine cannot be overstated, and Pine remains close with the Johnson family and with several Johnson group alumni.  Dennis will be sorely missed, not just by his family and the students whose lives he touched, but also by the entire team here at Pine.  We would not be where we are today without all of the help we received from Dennis over the many years.

    Below you can find a link to an official obituary as well as to an Iowa State University biography of Dennis Johnson highlighting his academic career.

    https://www.mahnfamilyfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Dennis-Johnson-26/#!/Obituary

    https://www.chem.iastate.edu/faculty/Dennis_Johnson

    A history of the development of the Rotating Ring-Disk Electrode and the role played by Dennis Johnson can be found in the following Interface magazine article published by the Electrochemical Society (ECS):

    http://interface.ecsdl.org/content/25/3/50.full.pdf

    Finally, Dennis left us with a timeless and wonderful piece of written encouragement and advice which can be found on the Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry (SEAC) website at the link below:

    http://electroanalytical.org/Johnson.html

     

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  • Still Making Waves!

    Last May, Pine Research announced the WaveDriver 200 Bipotentiostat with EIS at the 233rd ECS Meeting in Seattle, WA.  We were thrilled to finally be able to offer Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) and related analysis tools for the first time in our company’s proud history.  In celebration, we threw a massive beach party filled with tons of swag and giveaways, including beach balls and frisbees!  The weather in Seattle doesn’t easily lend itself to a beach party; however, the Fall 2018 ECS Meeting is conveniently in a slightly more tropical locale!

    This year’s joint ECS and SMEQ meeting (AiMES) is in Cancún, Mexico.  This destination conference is a great opportunity to stay current on the latest electrochemical research while enjoying the tropical atmosphere of the Moon Palace Resort in beautiful Cancún.  As such, we thought it would be fitting that you can pick up a beach ball or a frisbee at the Pine Research booth #18.  If you didn’t have a chance to see the WaveDriver 200 at the Seattle ECS meeting, come experience it at AiMES 2018.  Since our initial announcement of the WaveDriver 200 Bipotentiostat with EIS at the Seattle meeting we’ve been working around the clock to make sure the instrument is ready to ship.  You can currently find more information about the WaveDriver 200 on our website, and while you are visiting our booth to grab a beach ball, you should also check out our new and improved AfterMath Data Organizer Software with excellent new features like circuit fitting, data import, and much more.

    If you are planning on attending AiMES 2018, stop by the Pine Research booth #18 in the Universal Ballroom on the 2nd floor of the Expo Center.  Check out our new WaveDriver 200 Bipotentiostat with EIS.  Or at least stop by to grab some beach swag while you’re in Cancún!

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  • Building Global Trust, Confidence, and Knowledge

    Last week was an extremely busy, but very productive week at Pine Research Instrumentation.  Not only was the ACS Boston meeting last week, but several of our international distributors visited our facility in Durham, NC for 3 days of technical training.  We are proud of our high-quality instrumentation and excellent customer service and after this past week’s training, we feel very confident in our representative’s ability to troubleshoot Pine Research Instrumentation and support our customers from around the world.

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  • Can electrochemistry help the BRAIN Initiative?

    Special Kavli Lecture Series Symposium at ACS National Meeting in Boston, MA on August 21.

    The 256th ACS Fall National Meeting in Boston, MA is fast approaching.  This year’s theme is Nanoscience, Nanotechnology & Beyond. The Kavli Lectures will feature Dr. Jill Millstone of the University of Pittsburgh presenting Metal-ligand chemistry in nanoparticle synthesis and performance and Dr. Harry Atwater of the California Institute of Technology presenting Light as Fuel. In addition, the Kavli Foundation is sponsoring a two-part symposia on the BRAIN Initiative on Tuesday August 21th.  A morning session on Nanoscience & Nanotechnology in Neuroscience & the BRAIN Initiative organized by Dr. Anne Andrews, UCLA and an afternoon session on The Role of the Chemical Sciences in Brain Research & the BRAIN Initiative organized by Dr. Jonathan Sweedler, University of Illinois.

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