Blogs

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

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

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

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...

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...

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...

Retrieving the Carrier Frequency of Phase-Modulated or Carrier-Suppressed Signals with Costas Loops

08.11.2020

Phase-locked loops (PLLs) are widely used to recover the frequency of a carrier signal in many detection systems such as lock-in amplifiers and data receivers. To properly lock to the carrier phase and extract its frequency, a clean reference separate from the signal or a pilot tone within the signal must be provided for the PLL...

Fast Auto-Approach to Control Stepper Motor with the MFLI Threshold Unit

22.02.2017

In many applications where the distance between two objects needs to be reduced to a predefined gap, the ability to control a stepper motor with clear stop conditions from different sensors is of high practical interest. Such functionality can be used to bring an optical lens to the appropriate working...

Optimizing PLL Performance with PID Advisor and Auto Tune

27.07.2015

LabOne provides two tools that save time and improve performance for anybody working with the UHF-PID option: the PID Advisor and the Auto Tune feature. They enable automation of the feedback parameter tuning required to achieve the best PID (proportional-integral-derivative) controller performance. In this blog post, we'll show you an example that demonstrates the power of both of these tools...

Listening to FM Radio with the UHFLI

17.04.2013

Someone at Zurich Instruments soldered a 3.5-mm headphone socket to a BNC cable and attached a 75-cm antenna wire to the Signal Input of the UHFLI Lock-in Amplifier with the UHF-PID PID/PLL option and was happily listening to FM radio. Abuse alert! I instantly had to copy that one.

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