Admiral Instruments was founded in February 2017, but our mission started several years prior. Starting in 2013, Mark Sholin and Matthew Dion were scaling up microbial fuel cell technology for a startup company. They needed access to dozens of high-current potentiostat channels to benchmark the performance of their fuel cells, but their small company could not afford the six-figure price tag quoted by all the traditional brands for this capability. Instead, they decided to build their own electrochemical hardware and code their own software from scratch.

The first potentiostats hand-built by Mark and Matt for their microbial fuel cells were simple, but effective! This risky do-it-yourself approach saved their team enormous amounts of money which was better invested in furthering their electrochemical investigations. This breakthrough also saved lots of their time by improving upon the complexity and clunkiness of traditional potentiostat user interfaces. Mark and Matt suddenly found themselves with an opportunity to rethink how potentiostats are designed from the ground up, paving the way for a next-generation offering with the potential to help others seeking relief from the cost and complexity of traditional potentiostats.

The prototype potentiostats created by Mark and Matt had a distinctive shape that were reminiscent of a squid, with cabling looking like tentacles and heat sinks looking like fins. They decided to combine the words squid and potentiostat into Squidstat. The Squidstat name also distinguishes us from traditional brands with random letters and numbers for their product lines. We wanted something easy to remember and representative of an evolved approach to electrochemistry instrumentation!

As Mark and Matt continued refining these potentiostat prototypes and created a website to promote them, they began hearing from other groups around the world suffering from the same pain and wanting more accessible electrochemistry instrumentation. The inquiries started with just other microbial fuel cell groups through word of mouth, but quickly expanded to groups working across all types of electrochemistry – particularly battery research. This attention eventually became noticed by instrumentation industry veteran Stephen Hung. Stephen was inspired to join and help guide the team through the challenges of commercialization. Mark, Matt, and Stephen decided to form a brand new business entity together as co-founders, which is how Admiral Instruments was born!

We named the company Admiral Instruments to signal credibility and authority. The name also inherently reflects our core values of transparency, creativity, vigilance, enthusiasm, and safety. The nautical themes stemming from the naval rank of Admiral align with the sea creature inspiration for our Squidstats, too! Lastly, a nice bonus is that starting with the letter “A” grants us a natural priority on the top of alphabetical listings when we exhibit at conferences 😊

Every day we are building world-class electrochemistry hardware and software from the ground up at our offices in Arizona. We have shipped thousands of Squidstats to customers in over 40 countries. Our employees, in partnership with our Arizona-based contract manufacturer, perform all aspects of assembly and calibration thus qualifying for a Made In USA designation. The electrochemical applications engineers, hardware designers, software developers, and engineering technicians on our team are fiercely devoted to our mission in dedication to the millions of scientists, engineers, and technical professionals worldwide creating new electrochemical technologies to benefit our modern society.