Company Blog

Using a 10 MHz Clock Reference with HF2 Instruments

27.05.2013

Phase-synchronous operation of a variety of frequency sources and analyzers is a common requirement, which is usually solved by distributing a 10 MHz clock signal to which the individual instruments are phase-locked. This ensures not only a perfect frequency match between the referenced instruments, but also guarantees a constant phase...

Optimize Your HF2TA Transimpedance Amplifier Settings

24.05.2013

Users of the HF2TA transimpedance amplifier should always be aware of the trade-off between the transimpedance gain and the 3-dB roll-off bandwidth of the amplifier. (Hint: Since the HF2 software release 12.08, the bandwidth is also specified in the HF2TA gain drop-down list in ziControl.) However, there are other pitfalls...

Broadcasting FM and AM Radio with the UHFLI

06.05.2013

Following my previous blog post , people advised me to try to broadcast FM radio too. For this, I had to retreat into Zurich Instruments' shielded radiation lab, so that my experiment would remain concealed. It then took about 5 minutes to broadcast tunes from my mobile phone's 3.5 mm...

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.

Q-Control Example VI Tutorial

04.12.2012

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...

Resolution, Scanning Speed and Demodulation Bandwidth

06.12.2011