AC Circuits and Signal Modulation

Chemistry 152
Winter 2020
Please note: I sometimes make minor changes to the lab manual based on student confusion or
feedback. These changes will appear in this document in bold orange. If you print the lab
manual, please make sure to scan this Google Doc during the lab to see if anything has changed.

References
Shoemaker, Garland & Nibler Chapter XVI (.pdf on Canvas)
Skoog Ch. 5 (.pdf on Canvas)
Falstad Online Circuit Simulator
What is an Oscilloscope?
How-to Videos: Tektronix Digital Oscilloscope, Building the Photodiode Circuit

Pre-lab requirements and skills

1) Identification of resistors: reading resistor color code values.
2) Reading circuit diagrams; construction and use of basic circuits.

Warning: In part 4 of this lab, you will build a circuit that involves a rapidly-flashing
LED. If you have epilepsy or any other neurological condition that makes flashing
lights dangerous for you, please inform your instructor before beginning the
experiment.

Pre-lab questions
The answers to these questions should be recorded in the “Pre-Lab” page of your electronic lab
notebook before the beginning of your lab section. Each of these will require you to do some
background reading about the properties of a low-pass filtering circuit.

1. Come up with a pair of values of R and C that could be used to make a low-pass filter
that will pass through a DC voltage signal while rejecting (>95% attenuation) a 1
kHz interference signal. What is the cutoff frequency for that circuit? Show an
equation that describes how you arrived at this answer.
2. What is the time constant for the combination of R and C that you chose above?
Show an equation that describes how you arrived at this answer.
3. What is a transimpedance amplifier, and how will it be used in this experiment?

In-lab objectives
1) Learn how to build basic circuit filters and study their response to AC signals;
2) Learn to use test equipment including digital multimeters and oscilloscopes;
3) Learn to evaluate and troubleshoot basic circuits.

Before leaving the lab, read through the “Data Analysis and Report Writing” section
below and the grading rubric on Canvas to make sure you have all the data you need to
write your lab report!

This lab is intended to familiarize you with some of the basic concepts of electronic
measurement and also to introduce you to the use of some of the devices commonly
encountered in any experimental laboratory. Knowledge of the basic concepts in operation
amplifier circuit design and the use of these circuits will become useful as these circuits
will be used in later Chemistry 152 experiments.

Part 1: Time Constant of an RC Circuit

Construct the following circuit on the solderless breadboard. Use the square wave output
from the NI VirtualBench (or another function generator, as available) as the voltage
source:

Figure 1. RC Circuit with AC input (yours will be a square wave) and voltage measured across the
capacitor. The signal lead of the function generator should be hooked to the resistor, and the ground
lead should be hooked to the capacitor. Image stolen from electronics-tutorials.ws.

Choose two representative values of R (1kOhm, 10kOhm, or 100kOhm) and C (10nF,

100nF, or 1000nF), and observe Vc (the voltage across the capacitor) versus frequency for
each of the two circuits using the VirtualBench’s oscilloscope or the Tektronix digital
oscilloscope. You will need to monitor both the input (Vsource) and output (Vc) signals so
that you can find the correct square wave frequency to use. Export an example of the
waveform as a text file (be sure to note the scale and axis units in your lab notebook) or
take a photo of the oscilloscope screen and determine the time constant from the
oscilloscope trace. You can do this directly on the screen using the Cursor function of the
Tektronix oscilloscopes. Compare the measured time constant with the calculated time
constant, τ = RC. The measured time constant is the time required for the voltage growth
to reach (e - 1)/e of the final value or for the decay to reach 1/e of the initial value
(calculating these as percentages will make things easier, as will knowing that e = 2.718).

Do the values of τ = RC calculated from the decay match the time constant calculated from
the growth curve? If not, try to come up with an explanation.

Part 2: Frequency Dependence of a Low-Pass Filter

Construct another low pass filter on your solderless breadboard. Your voltage source
should be a sine wave from your VirtualBench at a frequency of 1000 Hz and whatever
voltage you deem appropriate. Your goal is to build a circuit using appropriate values of R
and C to eliminate the AC signal (essentially your answer to the first pre-lab question) - that
is, you should be able to measure a voltage across the capacitor at a lower frequency (say,
100 Hz), but should not be able to see anything at 1000 Hz.

Produce a graph of the frequency response of your low-pass filter. To do this, you should
change the frequency of your voltage source from very low to very high (use about 10
frequency values over the range from 10 Hz to 1000 Hz). Record the amplitude of the
source voltage (this should stay constant) and the amplitude of the voltage measured
across the capacitor (this should not stay constant) as you change the frequency. Record
these values in a spreadsheet and calculate the gain (Vout/Vsource) in dB using the equation
gain(dB) = 20*log(Vout/Vsource). Plot this ratio vs. the frequency on the x-axis (use a log
scale for this axis). This is called a Bode Plot, and it tells you the frequency behavior of
your RC circuit. What conclusions can you draw based on the plotted data?

Part 3: Effect of Sampling Frequency

In this part of the experiment, you will investigate the ideal sampling frequency to use to
acquire a continuously-varying signal. Your signal source will be a 10 Hz sine wave from
the VirtualBench function generator, and the signal collection device will be the USB-6002
and the associated data acquisition program. Wire the signal output of the function
generator directly into the AI0 or AI1 inputs of the USB-6002; you do not need to build any
additional circuit on the solderless breadboard.

Set the sampling rate for the USB-6002 to 1000 Hz and sample for a few seconds, then save
the file. Repeat this at 100 Hz, 20 Hz, and 10 Hz (you will need data files for several of these
to answer Question 3 on your lab report). What is the difference between the signal you
collect at each of these sampling rates?

Now try sampling at 5 Hz, 2.5 Hz and 1 Hz. What happens at these sample rates? Based on
all of your data, what is the minimum viable frequency you can use to sample a signal with
a frequency of 10 Hz?

Part 4: Signal Modulation for Light Detection

In this part of the experiment you will investigate the technique of signal modulation,
which is often used in spectroscopy when small signals need to be picked out of a noisy
background, a process that’s easier for high frequency signals than for low-frequency (or
DC) signals. In many instruments, a constant source will be modulated to a high frequency,
then the detected signal will be demodulated and detected. In this way sources of noise that
predominate at low frequencies can be ignored.

For Part 4, we will not attempt this whole process because of limitations of instrumentation
and time. Instead, your task will be to build a circuit that involves an LED light source, a
photodiode detector, and a 2-op-amp amplifier that should look slightly familiar from the
DC circuits experiment. This arrangement (except for the LED) can be seen below in Figure
3. A “pin diagram” for the photodiode is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Pin diagram for the photodiode.

Figure 3. The first op amp in this diagram converts the photocurrent from the photodiode into a voltage equal to
the product of the current and the feedback resistance. The second operational amplifier is an inverting amplifier,
which will amplify the voltage from the first op amp by a factor equal to the ratio R2/R1. The capacitor in this circuit
will create an active low-pass filter to eliminate high frequency noise; try different values if 10 nF doesn’t seem
optimal. You can also try putting the feedback capacitor on the second op amp, where it will perform the same
function.

Some background: A common way to use photodiodes to detect light is to operate them in
photovoltaic mode, in which the flow of current out of the photodiode is restricted by a load
resistor and a voltage builds up. The advantage of this mode of operation is a low amount
of dark current, but it is highly non-linear and not very fast. To address these problems, you
can operate the photodiode in photoconductive mode instead. In this mode of operation, an
op amp circuit called a current-to-voltage amplifier or transimpedance amplifier is used to
produce a voltage that’s proportional to the amount of photocurrent produced by the
photodiode, multiplied by the resistance of a feedback resistor.

Since the current from the photodiode is relatively small, we will use a simple non-
inverting amplifier (made from a second op amp in series with the output of the first) to
amplify the signal into the hundreds of millivolts range or higher. The signal from the
fluorescence detected with the photodiode will still be relatively small, but should be
detectable on the digital oscilloscopes. The result may also be noisy, so keep in mind that
the oscilloscopes can do some software averaging to give you a more stable signal and
make the peak-to-peak voltage easier to read.

Construct the circuit as shown in Figure 3, making sure to power your operational
amplifiers with ±6V from the DC power supply in the same way you did during the DC
Circuits experiment. Test your LED with a 5 V (peak-peak), 10 Hz square wave to make
sure it can be pulsed; you can try increasing the voltage if it does not light at this amplitude,
but increase it in small steps to avoid damaging the LED. Test your amplifier circuit using
the same square wave to make sure that you can reproduce the same square wave (in
terms of frequency) on the oscilloscope screen. If you can’t, you may try switching the
inputs to the op-amp (so that you make a regular inverting amplifier), which might work if
the other one does not. If the circuit is very noisy, you can try using a larger resistor and
capacitor between the two op amps; make sure to increase the feedback resistor on the
second op amp if you do this so that it is higher in resistance than the one leading into the
inverting input.

Once you are satisfied that your circuit is working, increase the frequency of the LED
voltage until you find the maximum frequency that gives you a good output signal (this
depends on the performance characteristics of the LED and the photodiode). Pick a
frequency that allows you to measure an un-distorted square wave, keeping the peak-to-
peak voltage of the square wave constant at the value you determined earlier.

Obtain a liquid sample from your TA that absorbs in the wavelength range of your LED (for
a green LED, a solution of the dye Red 40 works well, so we’ll use fruit punch flavored
Gatorade). Measure the change in voltage when you put your cuvette with your sample in
the light path (in other words, record the initial output voltage from your op amp and then
the op amp voltage with the sample in the light beam).. Dilute the sample by 10% and
perform this measurement again. Do at least two more of these dilutions, measuring the
change in voltage each time. Finally, perform the measurement with pure water in the
cuvette. Use your data to calculate the corrected absorbance for each measurement, using
the assumption that the voltage is directly proportional to the light power hitting the
photodiode. Make a plot of your absorbance vs. concentration (dilution factor) and
determine the calibration sensitivity of your simple colorimeter (a single-wavelength
spectrometer).

Before leaving the lab, read through the “Data Analysis and Report Writing” section
below and the grading rubric on Canvas to make sure you have all the data you need to
write your lab report!

Data Analysis and Report Writing

Your lab report will consist of a document in which you address the following points. Do
not worry about the questions above (except when they are repeated below).

All questions should be answered in well-thought-out paragraphs made up of complete

sentences. Pay attention to word limits in cases when they are specified. All graphs and
tables should each be formatted according to the guidelines in the Writing the Physical
Chemistry Lab Report document, which can be found on the course Canvas site. Make sure
to include the complete equation for any best-fit line in the figure caption. All numbers
should be reported with their associated uncertainties and units, and should be rounded to
the appropriate number of significant figures. You may answer the questions one after
another; you do not need to write anything to make the paper “flow”.

1. Report your results from Part 1, including the values of the capacitors and resistors
used and the uncertainties in those values. Also include a plot (or photograph) that
has both the input and output signals shown on it for each RC circuit. Are the time
constants that you measured in agreement with the theoretical value (within the
range of uncertainty that you expected based on the uncertainties in R and C)?

2. For Part 2, construct the Bode plot described in the procedure. Report the values of
R and C in your figure caption. In a paragraph below the figure, discuss the
difference between the theoretical cutoff frequency (given by (2πRC)-1) for this
circuit and the cutoff frequency that you find from your plot. If your plot does not
show you an unambiguous cutoff frequency, you may want to look up the definition
of a cutoff frequency for this kind of filter and see if an alternate way of looking at
the data may be helpful.

3. For Part 3, discuss the behavior of the signal you detected as a function of sampling
frequency. Based on all of your data, what is the minimum viable frequency you can
use to sample a signal with a frequency of 10 Hz? Include a plot of a sampling rate
that’s too low and one that is adequate in order to illustrate your point. Make sure
you explain how these plots helped you reach your conclusion.

4. For Part 4, include the plot of absorbance as a function of concentration that you
made. In the figure caption, include the complete equation of the best-fit line to the
data. In a paragraph of text below the figure, explain how the data was collected and
make sure to comment on the goodness of fit of the line.

5. Explain, in your own words, why signal modulation might be useful in a particular
analytical chemistry application. Specify an instrument, sampling method, etc. and
describe how signal modulation is necessary for an accurate measurement.