Workshop on EIS

11-12 April 2012. We held a workshop on the theory and practice of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) on 11-12 April 2012. The participants were all members of our lab. The trainer was Mr. Luca Pini from Metrohm, Netherland, that has expertise in the field.

In the first day, the workshop was held in the new Research Center building. Luca talked about types of corrosion, how to monitor them and corrosion analysis using EIS. He also talked about the usefulness of using EIS method compared to other electrochemical techniques such as linear polarization and cyclic voltametry. Different from linear polarization that only provide information on the material properties, EIS provides us useful information not only related to material being tested, but also to the properties of solution and interface (double layer).

After he explained for about 2 hours, the class was continued by discussion. There were many interesting questions concerning with analysis using EIS, mostly concerning with how to interpret EIS data in the form of Bode plot and Nyquist plot. Something that very important for analysis using EIS was about choosing the range of frequency applied on the measurement to get good data. The discussion went on for about 1 h.

In the second day, we moved to laboratory to practice EIS analysis on a magnetite-coated steel using potensiostat/galvanostat instrument Autolab PGSTAT 302, Metrohm. For about 3 h, some students practiced to use the instrument to get a good results. They were also tried to model the EIS data using equivalent electrical circuit and to interpret the Bode and Nyquist plots.

The workshop is really fruitful for our students. Thanks Luca.