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An “area tool” can be placed on the CV plot to find the area under a selected portion of the curve. However, this tool calculates the results purely mathematically, giving power (in watts). What an electrochemist wants to know is the total charge for that area.

There are two choices:

The first is to instead place the area tool on the current-versus-time (I-vs-T) plot so that the result is already a charge. The difficulty with this is knowing where to place the limits of the area tool (since the CV plot does not provide time data). An advantage of this method is that the results may be more accurate since any noise in the measured potential of the CV data can adversely affect the area calculation, whereas the corresponding X-axis on the I-vs-T is time, which will have neither noise nor measureable jitter.

The second is to manually divide the results of the area tool (power, i.e. Volts x Amps) by the sweep rate of the CV (Volts/sec, known from the experiment parameters) to find the charge (Amps x secs). If this result needs to be displayed on the plot, right-click and empty area of the plot and select “Add text” to display that calculated value.

Two types of data can be imported into Aftermath: columns of X-Y data on the system clipboard, and PineChem files (version 1.2.3208 and greater). Additional data import methods will be addressed in future releases.

Columns of X-Y data from the system clipboard can be imported onto a plot, as show in the screenshots below. Note that the user is expected to specify what the units of data are for each column:

Files from the previous software, PineChem, can be imported, as shown in the screenshots below. All experiment parameters and results (if any) all imported:

Note: the “Quite Time” is defined via the “Induction Period” on the “Advanced” tab.

The dual-electrode CV method (DECV) provides a “window mode” of operation where an offset potential may be used for the second working electrode. e.g. If E1 is sweeping 0mv-1000mV and the E2 offset is 100mV, then E2 will sweep 100mV-1100mV.

However, the “real-time” display of the experiment and the resulting CV plot seem to show E1 and E2 have the SAME potential. What is going on?

In both the “real-time” display and the final CV plot, the current from both channels (I1 and I2) is plotted versus E1 only. That is, E2 is *not* plotted versus I2. This is by design according to historical electrochemical convention.

In the “other plots” folder, the “Potential” plot shows the actual (and correct) potential was applied.

Data from an AfterMath can be copied to the system clipboard (versions 1.0.2477 and greater) or exported to files (version 1.2.4041 and greater).

Data from a single trace can be copied to the system clipboard (versions 1.0.2477 and greater). There are multiple ways to do this, as shown in the screenshots below:

Data can be exported to files ( version 1.2.4041 and greater ). There are several ways to do this, as shown in the screenshots further below. As shown in the following screenshot, selected items can be chosen for export – as much as entire archives can be exported at once, or as little as only a single trace.

Attempting to perform an experiment from AfterMath on the Pine AFCBP1 bipotentiostat using the ISA-type National Instruments card (AT-MIO-16E-10) may result in the following error:

This problem can be caused by a lack of DMA resources. This can be confirmed using either AfterMath or the National Instruments Measurement & Automation Explorer as shown below:

The original cause of this failure occurs during the installation of the National Instruments interface board device drivers, and can also be seen in the Windows Device Manager:

The problem can be fixed by using the Windows “Device Manager” as shown below.

See also the National Instruments website article about this problem here