Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy
Source: Kara Ingraham, Jared McCutchen, and Taylor D. Sparks, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
Electrical resistance is the ability of an electrical circuit element to resist the flow of electricity. Resistance is defined by Ohm's Law:
(Equation 1)
Where 
is the voltage and 
is the current. Ohm's law is useful for determining the resistance of ideal resistors. However, many circuit elements are more complex and can't be described by resistance alone. For example, if an alternating current (AC) is used then the resistivity will often depend on the frequency of the AC signal. Instead of using resistance alone, electrical impedance is a more accurate and generalizable measure of a circuit element's ability to resist the flow of electricity.
Most commonly, the goal of electrical impedance measurements is the deconvolution of a sample's total electrical impedance into contributions from different mechanisms such as resistance, capacitance, or induction.
- Obtain a test module and hook it up to the EIS instruments via two electrodes. The test module, pictured in Figure 3, provides data that can be used to model a simple, known circuit. It can be used to confirm that the wires are hooked up to the machine correctly and that all the machinery parts are functioning.
Figure 3: Test module.
Results of EIS are often presented in a Nyquist plot, which shows real impedance versus complex impedance at each frequency tested. The plot of the experiment ran can be seen in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Screenshot of computer after Nyquist plot was obtained.
Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy is a useful tool for determining how a new material or device impedes the flow of electricity. It does this by applying an AC signal through the electrodes connected to the sample. The data is collected and plotted by the computer in the complex plain. With the help of software, the graph can be modeled after specific parts of a circuit. This data can often be very complicated and requires careful analysis. This technique, however complex, is an extremely useful non-destructive mean
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