Company Blog

How Does a Zurich Instruments Lock-In Amplifier Work?

07.02.2022

General architecture of a Zurich Instruments lock-in amplifier.

Have you ever wondered what is going on inside your Zurich Instruments lock-in amplifier? Lock-in amplifiers enable precise measurements of small signals buried in noise. While analog instruments have been used for decades, the development of analog-to-digital converters with high speed, resolution, and linearity has more recently enabled the realization...

Quantum Material Characterization for Streamlined Qubit Development

03.01.2022

In this webinar, we covered the material properties that are most important to consider when developing qubits with longer coherence times and looked into how to characterize these materials accurately and efficiently. By focusing on the fundamental properties of the materials, simpler fabrication methods and experimental setups can be used...

A Pythonic Approach to LabOne

18.05.2022

In this blog post, we intend to shed light on zhinst-toolkit, our all-new high-level Python API. It aims to provide a pythonic approach to interface the test and measurement instruments from Zurich Instruments.

如何利用MFIA测量两个频率的阻抗值？

17.05.2022

对于一些阻抗测量的应用，诸如传感器表征、电介质材料表征来说，有时需要同时测量两个频率的阻抗值。除了基频之外，另一个频率可能是倍频，也有可能是另一个完全独立的频率。当您的 MFIA 安装 MF-MD 多频选件之后，就可以完成这一要求，只不过这里的设置与 MFLI 中的 MF-MD 多频选件振荡器频率设置步骤略有不同，这篇博文将予以说明。

SPM Webinar: From Charge Dynamics in Solids to Single-Molecule Spectroscopy with SPM

09.05.2022

This blog post accompanies the webinar, where we hosted Prof. Peter Grutter from McGill University in Canada. In this webinar, Peter explained some inner mechanisms of chemical reactions in molecules and charge dynamics in solids, that determine materials' most fundamental properties. To achieve this, he developed in the Nanoscience &...

Impedance Characterization of a Wideband Bias Tee

28.04.2022

A bias tee is often used to add a DC offset to an RF signal ideally without affecting its transmission. In the simplest format, this is often achieved with an L||C circuit, where the high-frequency RF signal passes through the capacitor C, and the DC counterpart is injected across the...

Interfaces: How to Make or Break a Nanodevice - Q&A

05.04.2022

This blog post accompanies the webinar "Interfaces: How to make or break a nanodevice". In this webinar, we discussed the role of interfaces for nanodevices: why they are important, how they can destroy the properties of a nanodevice, and how you can characterize interfaces using different measurement techniques. The recording...

A Fast and Integrated Qubit Control System - SHFQC Launch Event

18.03.2022

On March 3rd, Jan Benhelm, Bruno Küng and I were thrilled to welcome a diverse audience from all over the world to present our newest instrument - the SHFQC Qubit Controller. In the first part of the webinar Jan explained how the SHFQC integrates a full qubit control system for...

用任意波形发生器的命令表实现波形序列高效产生和实时调控

15.03.2022

测试测量中常用到任意波形发生器来产生波形和序列，作为系统激励信号。对波形和序列的快速刷新，甚至波形参数的实时调控，是提升测量效率和执行高级调控算法的关键。传统的任意波形发生器在播放波形前，用户需要编译和上传定序程序和逐点定义的全部波形到仪器。当播放的波形很长或者需要频繁更换或重新定序时，需要反复地进行编译和上传，占用很多时间，降低了测试效率。我们的任意波形发生器 HDAWG 的新功能——Command Table 命令表，可以与内置的数字振荡器结合，很好地解决这个问题，仅仅需要少量的波形采样点就可以播放复杂的波形, 并且可以对波形参数进行实时调控。比如，任意波形发生器只需要32个波形采样点（波形单元的最短长度）来产生 Figure 1 和 Figure 2 里的波形序列。

Faster Impedance Measurements at Low Frequency

01.03.2022

Impedance measurements at frequencies as low as 1 mHz can take a significant amount of time for a multi-point sweep. The MFIA Impedance Analyzer allows for sweeps from 1 mHz to 5 MHz, with a freely selectable number of points up to 100000. In standard mode on the MFIA, a...

如何用锁相放大器处理直流信号

25.02.2022

经常有用户想了解如何用锁相放大器测量和处理直流信号。常见的需求是对直流信号进行产生和自动扫描，降噪提取，放大输出等操作。因为这属于相对特殊的应用，在进行参数设置时需要注意的地方比较多。在 Jelena 的博文中介绍了用 HF2LI 检测直流信号。在这篇博文中，我将以 MFLI 为例，为大家介绍如何实现这些功能和如何优化参数设置。作为理解参数设置的基础，我们先简要回顾锁相放大器的基本原理。如果想系统学习锁相放大器的原理，可以阅读原理详细介绍, 观看教学视频。

任意波形发生器基于脉冲计数器的数值实时产生动态波形序列

15.02.2022

多通道任意波形发生器 HDAWG 具有脉冲计数器升级选件。任意波形发生器模块和脉冲计数器模块可以同时工作。这样 HDAWG 就同时具备了测控信号输出的能力和检测系统响应的能力。HDAWG 的定序器 Sequencer 支持高级定序功能，支持动态跳转。那么，可不可让任意波形发生器的输出序列根据脉冲计数器的数值进行实时动态跳转呢？可以，而且很方便，仅需要在定序程序 sequence 中加入几行代码即可实现。

Discovering the MF-IA Impedance Analyzer Option

11.02.2022

This blog post introduces the MF-IA Impedance Analyzer option, which can be added to the MFLI Lock-in Amplifier to enhance it with the same impedance analyzer and precision LCR meter functionality as the MFIA Impedance Analyzer. Adding the MF-IA option to your MFLI gives you the ability to measure the...

How to Set Two Oscillation Frequencies for the MFIA?

09.02.2022

Result of configuring two osc frequencies

Sometimes we want to measure impedance at two different frequencies simultaneously. The second frequency can be either higher-order harmonics or completely independent from the first one. Thanks to the MF-MD Multi-Demodulator option, we can conveniently set this up. In this short blog post, we will walk you through.

Characterizing Electrochemical Gas Sensors with Impedance Measurements

14.12.2021

Gas sensing is a topic of broad research interest. Our page on tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) shows a good example of application. That example considers an optical investigation to quantitatively assess gas content, achieving extremely low detection limits. In this short blog post, we focus instead on the...

Best Practices in Sensor Characterization and Control - Q&A

02.12.2021

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 branch...

How to Control Spectral Leakage with Window Functions in LabOne

25.11.2021

Symmetric and asymmetric window functions

Spectral characterization of signals and systems is required in a broad range of applications in physics and engineering. Analyzing a signal in the frequency domain reveals valuable information about the signal behavior which is not necessarily obtainable from its time-domain analysis...