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PID Controllers

How to Measure Allan Variance with Zurich Instruments Lock-in Amplifiers

28.08.2023

Allan Variation measurement with Zurich Instruments lock-in amplifiers.

Any measurement resolution is limited by random fluctuations, "noise", of the measured quantities. Practical systems also might experience variations of parameters causing "drifts" in the measurements. Various sources of such noises and drifts may take different time or frequency dependencies. To understand how such fluctuations affect one's measurement, a careful analysis of such noise and drifts must be performed. Discrimination of such noise sources might be performed by performing Allan deviation measurement of discretely sample data. In this blog post, we discuss how to easily measure Allan variance with our Zurich Instruments lock-in amplifier.

Resonator Characterization via the Pound-Drever-Hall Method

21.08.2023

PDH Block diagram

This blog discusses methods for measuring the frequency fluctuations and quality factor, 𝑄, of a resonator. Resonators are physical systems that naturally oscillate at a well-defined frequency. At this resonant frequency, energy exchanges periodically between two forms, for example, kinetic and spring energy as in a scanning probe microscope’s cantilever...

Quantum Materials: from Characterization to Resonator Measurements - Q&A

26.06.2023

QT Webinar Physic Today

In this webinar, we discussed transport measurements on materials for quantum computing, why studying resonators accelerates development of materials used for quantum computing by yielding a wealth of information, and how to measure resonators effectively with the Pound-Drever-Hall method. The recording of the full webinar can be found here...

Setting Up Drive Level Capacitance Profiling Measurements

14.03.2023

DLCP

Drive level capacitance profiling (DLCP) is a powerful technique to accurately determine the charge carrier density in semiconductors when deep level states are present. It is often considered an improvement over the widely applied characterization technique known as capacitance-voltage (C-V) profiling...

Best Practices in Sensor Characterization and Control - Q&A

02.12.2021

Bode plot of the resonance of a sensor

For this webinar we teamed up with Dr. Tomás Manzaneque , whose work focuses on the fabrication, modeling and interfacing of mechanical micro-resonators in different fields of application: examples are rheological sensing, ultra-sensitive mass sensing, passive conditioning of RF signals for the Internet-of-Things communications, and single-cell biopsy. His research interests...

Sensor Characterization and Control

25.05.2020

Lock-in Principle

Sensors come in different flavors. They can be inertial devices for motion detection, tehy can be based on photosensitive materials, they can absorb surrounding molecules to detect their concentration, and so on. Developments in micromachining and micro-/nano-electromechanical system (MEMS/NEMS) technologies led to miniaturization and low power consumption. Hence, multiple sensors...

Compensating Delay-Induced Phase Shifts for High-Frequency Resonators

20.02.2017

Compensation Delay Schematic

Phase-locked loops (PLL) or other PID controllers on nano-mechanical resonators rely on clean phase signals that exhibit large slope, or significant phase shift, around the resonance frequency. For really high-frequency NEMS and opto-mechanical systems above a few tens or hundreds of MHz, any small delay can have significant effect on...

How to Tune the HF2LI-PID Controllers

17.09.2013

Step Response

I often get questions from first-time users on how to properly tune the PID gain parameters. I am no expert in feedback control systems or the PID loop optimization, but I do believe tuning the HF2LI-PID parameters should not be an intimidating task for anybody who needs to use the...

Q-Control Example VI Tutorial

04.12.2012

Q-Control Schematic

Using a Zurich Instruments lock-in amplifier, you can measure the quality factor of an arbitrary resonator - typically a resonant beam used in non-contact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) applications. This can be useful to increase phase sensitivity in a phase-locked loop (PLL) setup, for example, or to increase the characteristic...

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