Company Blog

Different Views on Quality Factor and Equivalent Circuit Modeling

21.09.2023

MFIA front

For ease of communication, scientific nomenclature is often named as short as possible. Unfortunately, sometimes this convention leads to different terms sharing the same name, which may lead to confusion. Taking piezoelectric impedance and dielectric impedance as examples in this blog post, we will clarify 2 ambiguous terms, the quality...

Fitting Electrical Impedance Spectra Measured by an MFIA Impedance Analyzer

21.08.2023

Nyquist screenshot

Equivalent circuit modeling (ECM) is often necessary to understand the detailed frequency-dependent physics behind a device or component. In many real-world scenarios where the circuit model is complicated (more than 2 elements), ECM can only be done after a frequency sweep is completed, or in other words, during post-processing. In...

Detecting Covid Virus Using an MFIA Impedance Analyzer

14.06.2023

MFIA

In the past few years, the spread of COVID-19 pandemic has led to a tremendous development in detecting SARS-CoV-2 (and HCoV-229E) viruses. Whereas polymerase chain reaction-based fluorescence is known to be accurate, it is time-consuming and requires sophisticated setup and expertise. On the other hand, lateral flow assay (LFA) is...

Piezoelectric Impedance: Measurement and Modeling

13.04.2023

teaser piezo

Piezoelectric materials can produce electricity under mechanical stresses, and often find uses in both sensing and transducing applications. In this blog post, we focus on the electrical impedance measurement of piezoelectric materials, using an MFIA Impedance Analyzer (measuring the electrical response of piezoelectric devices often requires a charge integrator, which...

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...

Dielectric Impedance Measurements of Chocolates

19.12.2022

winter card

Swiss chocolates are famous worldwide thanks to their high quality of taste. Switzerland is also renowned as the country with the highest chocolate consumption per capita. Today, many popular brands can be found even in the supermarket. Are you curious about what makes the chocolates special? And which non-destructive technique (NDT) can be employed to measure them?

Understanding the Sweep Duration in the LabOne Sweeper Module

31.08.2022

A fast sweep capability is often desired by researchers working on fast physical phenomena or short-lived samples, and may also be beneficial purely from a time-saving perspective. This blog post will elucidate the factors on which the sweep rate depends and guide you along several possible ways to make the...

DLTS User Meeting 2022 – Q&A

25.07.2022

DLTS User Meeting 2022

This blog post presents a selection of questions and answers raised during the DLTS User Meeting 2022. The meeting intended to bring together the community who may face common measurement challenges and allow them to share core competencies and know-how.

DC-biased Impedance Measurements Using an External Bias Tee

23.06.2022

DC-biased impedance measurement

A bias tee is often used in DC-biased impedance measurements. In fact, some impedance analyzers may have a built-in bias tee to allow the output of a sine wave with DC offset. Advanced ones such as the MFIA Impedance Analyzer , are further equipped with an analog adder path to...

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...

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...

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...

Loudspeaker Impedance Measurements

26.07.2021

audio fig1

Loudspeakers are electroacoustic transducers that convert electrical signals into acoustic ones. They are commonly found in our daily lives. One of the most frequently used types, known as an electrodynamic loudspeaker, functions by the movement of a cone membrane (diaphragm). When AC electrical signals are sent to the voice coil...

Interdigitated Electrode Sensors for Liquid Measurements

16.06.2021

Fig.1

In previous blog posts, we demonstrated conductivity and permittivity measurements of liquids using the MFIA Impedance Analyzer. To reach the best accuracy, the measurements were carried out using immersion probes or dielectric fixtures with a precisely defined electrode area and spacing. This step is important as any error in the...

Taking Dielectric Measurements to the Liquid State

25.05.2021

The MFIA Impedance Analyzer is connected to a third-party liquid dielectric test fixture

Liquid dielectrics are dielectric materials in a liquid state and are widely used in electrical insulation as well as cooling. Nonetheless, their fluidity also makes accurate dielectric measurements a challenge. In a previous blog post , we saw how to measure solid-state materials with the MFIA Impedance Analyzer and a...