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Measuring Photo-Enhanced Ionic Conductivity

02.06.2022

Dino holding the MFIA and the April issue of Nature Materials

This blog post summarizes the latest academic project of Dino, our new Application Scientist Impedance Analysis. He investigated materials for high-temperature fuel cells in Fukuoka, Japan and the results made it to the front cover of Nature Materials. Learn how light can be used to increase the ionic conductivity of standard electrolyte materials for solid oxide fuel cells, and how to measure this effect using the MFIA Impedance Analyzer.

A Pythonic Approach to LabOne

18.05.2022

A Pythonic Approach to LabOne

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.

Impedance Characterization of a Wideband Bias Tee

28.04.2022

photo and circuit of a bias tee

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

MFLI lock-in amplifier

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.

Faster Impedance Measurements at Low Frequency

01.03.2022

MFIA Impedance Analyzer

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...

Discovering the MF-IA Impedance Analyzer Option

11.02.2022

The MF-IA option for the MFLI

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.

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

Basic decoherence types

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...

Characterizing Electrochemical Gas Sensors with Impedance Measurements

14.12.2021

Gas sensing with the MFIA

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

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...

Choosing the Best Current Input Range for Impedance Measurements

20.10.2021

Current-zone-ranging

Auto-ranging is one of the key features of all impedance analyzers. It makes it possible to run a sweep (of frequency, AC amplitude, DC bias, or other parameters of interest) continuously and without manual adjustments of the input ranges. This helps particularly when working with reactive components, whose impedance changes...

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