Paper Info
Title
Vibration Reed Electrometer for Accurate Measurement of Electrical Currents Below 10 pA
Abstract
The paper is about developing a home-built vibrating reed (VR) electrometer. The heart of the meter is a VR capacitor, which excels in a stable and low input leakage current of only 8 aA with a 2 aA noise for a 1 h measurement. This paper demonstrates that this makes the instrument ideal for the characterization of subtle charge effects in, for example, connectors and cables. The exceptional sensitivity of the electrometer is proven in a measurement of the leakage resistance of an air gap capacitor which results in a value of Rleak = (8.8 0.3) 1017 Omega, obtained at a test voltage of only 10 V. Calibration of the system with both a picoampere and a picocoulomb generator shows that the instrument has an accuracy of 15 parts in 106 (k = 1) at a current of 1 pA. As far as we are aware, this is the best uncertainty for a room temperature electrometer published so far
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1109/TIM.2007.890792
Instrumentation and Measurement, IEEE Transactions
Keywords
DocType
Volume
calibration,capacitors,charge measurement,electric current measurement,electrometers,leakage currents,1 h,10 V,2 aA,8 aA,VR capacitor,air gap capacitor,calibration,charge effects,electrical current measurement,leakage current,leakage resistance,picoammeter,small currents,vibration reed electrometer,Calibration,current measurement,electrometer,picoammeter,small currents
Journal
56
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
2
0018-9456
2
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.53
2
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Gert Rietveld15118.15
Helko E. van den Brom23210.94