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The developments of primary standards for electrical quantities that practically realize the electrical units such as ampere (A), volt (V), ohm (Ω), and farad (F) are introduced in this manuscript. These quantities are achieved in consistency with their definitions. According to the new definition of ampere, current can be realized directly such as single electron transport (SET) pump or indirectly using Ohm’s law. For the SET pump, developments are ongoing as trials to obtain higher current values with lower associated uncertainty to be suitable for metrological applications. With the discoveries of the Effects of Josephson and quantum Hall, it has become possible to consider quantum electrical standards that relate the volt and ohm units to h and e through the Josephson and the von Klitzing constants, respectively. The dc programmable Josephson standard was developed to overcome the problems of conventional standards such as stability and noise immunity with lower cost. Developments are continuing on ac Josephson standards to improve performance and increase output voltages and frequencies. For ac voltage measurements for voltages up to 1000 V, thermal voltage converters are introduced to extend the traceability for measuring the ac voltages in the frequency range from 10 Hz to 100 MHz where quantum-based ac standards still have limitations. Thermal current converters are used as the most accurate and precise standard for measurement of ac currents. The realization of ohm is done by the quantum Hall effect through a quantum Hall resistance (QHR) standard. Developments are occurring to make it simpler, more precise and accurate. The efforts that have been made to increase the values of the resistance quantum hall standard to disseminate its accuracy to other standard resistors to help in industry are also introduced. The farad is practically achieved by the calculable cross-capacitor. The calculable capacitor acts as the ac impedance primary standard because it can transfer the traceability to other impedances by using bridges such as the quadrature bridge. The development is occurring on its displacement sensing system to allow greater accuracy.

In this paper, the analysis of SiGe source-based heterojunction Tunnel FET device is reported. The parameters like transconductance (gm), device efficiency (gm/ID), gate-source capacitance (CGS), gate-drain capacitance (CGD), cut-off frequency (fT), and gain-bandwidth product (GBP) are studied. DC, as well as AC simulations, have been performed on the proposed device. We have achieved an ON current of 0.537 mA/µm and an OFF current of 13 fA/µm, thus achieving ION/IOFF ratio as 3.72 × 1010. The values obtained for the transconductance are 0.68 milliSiemens, cut-off frequency is 446 GHz, gate-source capacitance is 0.387 femto Farads, and gate drain capacitance is 0.694 femtoFarads. The lower values of parasitic capacitances enable the device to be helpful for the low power and analog/RF applications even at high frequencies. The device has also been investigated for the temperature analysis concerning the drain current and the capacitance calculations. It was observed that the OFF currents are strongly dependent on the temperature in the drain current characteristics of the device. All the simulations have been performed on Visual TCAD (licensed version 1.9.2–3).

Capacitance detection is a universal transduction mechanism used in a wide variety of sensors and applications. It requires an electronic front-end converting the capacitance variation into another more convenient physical variable, ultimately determining the performance of the whole sensor. In this paper we present a comprehensive review of the different signal conditioning front-end topologies targeted in particular at sub-femtofarad resolution. Main design equations and analysis of the limits due to noise are reported in order to provide the designer with guidelines for choosing the most suitable topology according to the main design specifications, namely energy consumption, area occupation, measuring time and resolution. A data-driven comparison of the different solutions in literature is also carried out revealing that resolution, measuring time, area occupation and energy/conversion lower than 100 aF, 1 ms 0.1 mm2, and 100 pJ/conv. can be obtained by capacitance to digital topologies, which therefore allow to get the best compromise among all design specifications.

The effect of electron irradiation with energy of 2.5 keV on the MOS structure Al/SiO2/Si capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics have been studied. At chosen beam energy the electron penetration depth is lower than the dielectric thickness that allows to reveal the contribution of excess carrier transport to the trap formation on the SiO2/Si interface. It was established that the electron beam irradiation leads to a significant change in the C-V characteristics slope, i.e. to to the trap formation at the interface. A study of effect of bias applied to the investigated structure before and during the electron beam irradiation was carried out. It was established that while the bias applied before irradiation practically did not affect the C-V characteristics of the investigated MOS structure, the positive voltage applied to metallization during irradiation produced a pronounced effect on the C-V curve changes. At the same time the C-V characteristics after irradiation with zero and negative voltage were very similar. The investigation of stability of changes produced by the electron beam irradiation showed that the C-V curves are slowly restored even at room temperature. An applied negative bias was found to slow down the charge relaxation process.

A national traceability chain from dc quantum Hall resistance (QHR) to capacitance has been established at Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science using various impedance standards and coaxial bridges. An ac–dc calculable resistance standard of nominal value of 12.9 $\text{k}\Omega $ was used as a transfer standard from dc to ac at the frequency of 1.541 kHz. Two ac coaxial bridges, developed by INRiM, were employed: a ratio bridge, linking the 103- $\text{k}\Omega $ ac resistor to the 12.9- $\text{k}\Omega $ ac–dc calculable resistor calibrated in terms of the dc QHR and a quadrature bridge, calibrating the 1000 pF capacitors versus the 103- $\text{k}\Omega $ ac resistors. The ratio bridge defines the 103- $\text{k}\Omega $ resistor as a two-terminal-pair (2TP) standard and the 12.9- $\text{k}\Omega $ resistor as a four-terminal-pair standard; a cable correction was applied to the 2TP defined standard. The stability of all standards has been monitored for more than 3 years to be within a few parts in 106. The capacitance value, obtained with the new traceability chain, shows an agreement (a few parts in 107) in a comparison with the reference values, traced from the National Institute for Standards and Technology (USA).

In this era of global connectivity, the billions of smart devices are in thrust of ultra-low power secure computing systems. In this perspective, Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) are innovative hardware security primitive as they inherent the indispensable IC manufacture variations to generate trusted random keys. However, the existing CMOS based PUFs are prone to severe attacks as the technology matures the attackers too. While when it comes to emerging devices such as TFET, the lack of stabilization in fabrication process become source of extensive manufacturing variations which leverages PUF with additional advantages of low power and circuit integration density. However, like any other emerging device TFET is also facing problems such as ambipolarity and low driving current. In this paper, for the first time Gate All Around (GAA) structure of large range of III-V and IV semiconductors for physically doped TFET has been analysed in order to find most suitable alternative for CMOS in circuit level designing. We found that due to lattice match Ge/GaAs based GAA TFET has highest driving current( I O N ) of 1.08 × 10 − 3 A at low threshold voltage of 0.29 V and transconductance( g m ) of 0.25 (m Ω − 1 ). Also, importance of a GAA structure in low power security applications has been illustrated, as it has OFF current in pico Ampere and parasitic capacitance in atto Farad. Further, the impact of random variations on basic device and inverter characteristics of electrically dominant Ge/GaAs based GAA TFET has been investigated first time for designing delay based Ring Oscillator PUF (ROPUF) and finally, its quality factors have been evaluated.

Electricity is the primary source of power in most countries including Sri Lanka, and saving or minimising the waste of it has become crucial in facing the world power crisis. Electrical power is wasted in various ways including reactive power waste due to induction and capacitance of appliances, and standby power loss. These two contribute most to the waste. This paper focuses on reducing the reactive power waste of inductive electrical appliances commonly used in home and office by increasing the power factor. An attempt was made to reduce the power waste of inductive electrical appliances by connecting a capacitor bank with a variable capacitance in parallel with the appliance. Optimal capacitance and the power factor are determined using the capacitor bank. Results indicate about 30 percent of power saving could be achieved for fluorescent tube lamps using a power factor correction. A maximum power factor of 0.93 is achieved at the capacitance value of 2.99 F. It is not possible, by this method, to increase the power factor of more capacitive equipment such as CFL bulbs and ceiling fans. In this case, power minimisation could be tried connecting inductors in parallel with the equipment. Power factor and power consumption of home electrical appliances were measured for advising the general public of high power consuming equipment, especially in stand-by mode. To attain a further reduction of power waste it is proposed to measure inductance, capacitance and resistance of appliances using Hendry, Farad and Ohm meter. Total impedance can then be calculated and the power waste could be minimised using appropriate capacitors and/or inductors. Keywords: reactive power, power factor, power waste, reactive power waste, power minimisation

This article presents a novel front-end circuit for remote grounded capacitive sensors. The circuit is insensitive to amplifier input capacitance and stray interconnecting-cable capacitances. It does not rely on neutralization or compensation techniques that require manual adjustments and high-accuracy reference components. The proposed solution reduces the circuit input capacitance below a few femptofarads using a simple but properly shielded custom transformer. In addition, the circuit keeps a nonlinearity error below 0.01% when measuring capacitances of units or tens of picofarad, even with up to 12-m interconnecting cables.

For the past few decades, the researchers have keen interest in developing an energy harvester for low power devices. Several MEMS based piezoelectric architectures have been employed. In this work, the electrical energy to be harvested from mechanical vibrations made of polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) piezoelectric material of thickness $100\mu \text{m},200\ \mu\text{m}$ and $300\ \mu \text{m}$ on $200\ \mu\text{m}$ thick copper (Cu) substrate. The structure was simulated under three different predetermined vibrations, using an online numerical simulation tool. By translating the vibration and voltage signals into dimensional variables, an empirical relationship was found in which the output power can be related to the vibration characteristics, the piezoelectric material properties, and the resistive load. The simulated results were recorded and tabulated. This PVDF piezoelectric cantilever-based MEMS energy harvester that operates under ambient excitation of natural frequency band of 191 to 241 Hz, within a base acceleration of 2.9 to 4.7g produces an average output power of 0.15u – 1.65u [uW] and 0.3 volts at 1u farad load capacitance. These results are way promising to power up potential biodevices and low frequency applications.

In this work, we demonstrate a load resistance measurement system aimed at automating a vibration type capacitive energy harvester using a CdS analog linear optical coupler as a variable resistor. The CdS variable resistor exhibits non-polar, very low parasitic capacitance below picofarad and high allowable voltage over a wide range of variable resistance. By controlling a LED driving current of the CdS analog coupler, variable resistance range of 10 MΩ to 100 kΩ was obtained by 0.4 μA–6 μA driving current. The results show that the resistance is reproducible at full scale with a low error rate of less than ±3%. The detailed characteristics of the CdS coupler and the automated measurement results of the piezoelectric MEMS vibration energy harvester by using Arduino microcontroller are also described.

A capacitor is a device that stores electric energy between a pair of electrodes on which electric charges (Q in Coulomb) accumulate. Historically, capacitors have taken the form of a pair of thin metal plates, which are either flat or tightly wound up in a cylinder having capacitance (C). This is a measure of the potential difference or voltage (V), which appears across the plates for a given amount of energy stored on each plate (Q/V in a unit of Farad). A traditional parallel-plate capacitor stores the amount of energy that is proportional to the surface area (A) of the conducting plate and inversely proportional to the distance (d) between the plates. It is also proportional to the permittivity of the dielectric substance that separates the plates, whether vacuum, air, or electrically insulating materials chosen for their special dielectric characteristics.

This paper outlines a practical realization of the farad in the revised SI at LNE. To improve the traceability of the unit of capacitance in the SI with a target relative standard uncertainty of one part in 108, a new Thompson-Lampard calculable capacitor is currently developed. This paper presents the latest developments on the alignment of the electrodes and the positioning of the movable guard in the cavity.

The experiments were carried out aimed to compare the capacitance measured in terms of the new calculable capacitor standard to the capacitance measured in terms of the von Klitzing constant ( $R_{\mathrm{K}}$ ) using the quantized Hall resistance (QHR). The experiment systems such as the calculable capacitor, the quantized Hall resistance standard, and the impedance measurement chain are briefly presented. The recent two key comparison results on capacitance and resistance standards are also introduced.

Specific demand of lightweight and high efficient flexible energy unit is increased day by day for its integration into bendable electronics devices. Super-capacitor is one of the promising power unit to meet the current requirement. Flexible metal oxide and polypyrrole based flexible electrode materials are prepared using electrodeposition. The calculated specific capacitances of the devices shows 0.5 mill farad per gram. The super-capacitor is ultra-flexible, stable with operational voltage window expands from 0.8 to 2.5 V which can help to reduce the number of super-capacitor in series connection to obtain the same output. In this study, a conductive polymer can be coupled with MnO2 to improve capacitance and conductivity of a hybrid structure based on MnO2.

The objective of this work is to study the dielectric properties of potato tubers asa criteria for predicting of freshnessfor each of fresh and storage commodity under traditional (Nawala) and cold conditions. Dielectric measurementswere measured using LCZ meter,andwere conducted on fresh and stored tubers, for measuring of capacitance (Farad, f), and conductance (Siemens, S) over a range of frequencies from 10 to 1000 kHz. The measured value were used to calculate permittivity (f/m), conductivity (S/m), relative permittivity, complex permittivity (S.sec/f), complex conductivity (f/m.sec) and dissipation factor or "loss tangent" (tan δ) of potato tuber. The capacitance,relative permittivitydecreases rapidly with increasing frequency.Dissipation factor Tan (δ) decreases gradually with increasing the storage time. Complex permittivity and Complex conductivity were decreases with the increases of the storage time. The quality factor Q was expressed as a percentage value of the ratio between conductance at high frequency to that at low frequency (GH/GL) for the stored tissue to that for the fresh tissue to indicate the degree of freshness. The quality factor Q decreases with the increasing ofstorage time, storage temperature and storage load stressand isa fairly goodindication of the loss of freshness. The storage ages of potatoes were predictedwith very sensitive equation using the quality factor, tuber weight and storage temperature.

Due to the dispersive porous nature of its material, carbon–carbon supercapacitors have a current–voltage relationship which is modeled by a fractional-order differential equation of the form i ( t ) = C α d α v ( t ) dt α where α ≤ 1 is a dispersion coefficient and C α is a pseudo-capacitance not measurable in Farads. Hence, the energy stored in a capacitor, known to equal CV 2 / 2 where C is the capacitance in Farad and V is the voltage applied, does not apply to a supercapacitor. In a recent work (Allagui et al., 2016), a fractional-order energy equation that enables the quantification of the energy stored in a supercapacitor when it is charged by a linear voltage ramp was derived. In addition, an effective capacitance (in proper Farad units) obtained from the time-domain analysis of the supercapacitor model under this type of charging was also derived. While some experimental results were given in Allagui et al. (2016), here we provide more experimental evidence of the applicability of the fractional-order energy equation using two commercial devices from two different vendors. We also show the effect of fast charging versus slow charging on the amount of energy stored in these supercapacitors.

We use a photonic-crystal platform to demonstrate opto-electronic devices and integrated functions with a femto-farad capacitance. This allows us to realize amplifier-free photo-receiver, electro-optic modulator, and O-E-O signal converter operating in a fJ/bit energy consumption.

An imperative quest for overcoming the crisis of alternative source of energy ignited an extensive search for a nano storage device. Herein we report an idea of nanocapacitor Graphitic Carbon Nitride (g-C4N3) where a quantum capaciance has been calculated by charge transfer method and the value of the capacitance is reported to be 0.046 x 10-19 farad, which is comparable to the hitherto reported supercapctiors.

A microfluidic device capable of sensing even fraction of pico Farad capacitive change is proposed. Purpose of the developed device is fluid concentration identification and characterization on the basis of the dielectric permittivity. A microchannel, realized on Silicon layer, below a sensing capacitor formed by electrodes sputter printed on a glass substrate. Fluids inside the microchannel affects the capacitance that is measured by a standard electronic interface system. Experimental results obtained for different fluids injected in the microchannel demonstrate the ability of the system to differentiate the fluids and estimate their dielectric permittivity both as pure samples and as mixtures at varying concentration of solute fractions. This makes the device a promising building block for fluid mixing monitoring in microfluidic systems.

This paper introduces the test technology of redistribution layer used in FOPLP. In order to lower costs, FOPLP needs to adopt the RDL first process. In addition, it is necessary to guarantee that the package such as 2.5D that formed RDL is non-defective before mounting ICs. Since RDL is mounted on a carrier such as glass, double-sided inspection of the package becomes difficult. It is capacity inspection that can be proposed as this solution. In our work, we have improved the micro capacity tester to the accuracy below femto farad. Using this tester, we have demonstrated defect detection between RDL vias, formation defects of plating etc., in the package manufactured in an actual process. This method also allowed us to consolidate probing on one side. We introduce technologies for solving 40 um fine pitched micro pad probing problems as well as achieving a lower cost of test for a line and space 2/2 um FOPLP.

Due to the scaling down of CMOS and MEMS technology, the variation of capacitance decreases to the sub-femto-farad level. The signal charge from sensing element is weak, it is vulnerable to the dynamic coupling interference. This interference generates error charge that significantly affects accuracy of signal transmission. It is a crucial problem that how to assure the signal integrity (SI) for such a high-precision readout circuit. This paper deals with SI and EMI analysis of MEMS capacitive sensor-accelerometer/inertial sensor. And the paper demonstrates how significantly the IC-layout can contribute to the EMC performance of sub-femto-farad readout circuit for MEMS capacitive sensor. The measurement results show that the precision IC-layout reduces the equivalent input offset and improve the EMC performance of the readout circuit.

The Food Animal Residue Avoidance Databank (FARAD) is a comprehensive computerized databank of regulatory and pharmacologic information useful for mitigation of drug and chemical residue problems in food-producing animals. For drugs, the databank contains information on proprietory products, labelled indications for use, and approved withdrawal and milk discard times. For drugs and chemicals, data are available on physiochemical properties of the chemical or generic drug, on tissue, egg and milk tolerances of these compounds, and on their pharmacokinetic behavior. This latter category is the most unique aspect of FARAD as it involves an extensive statistical analysis of published data, which results in estimates of the rates of depletion of these compounds in target animal species. These data have not been previously available. All data in FARAD are linked to specific sources which are listed in a citation file. Finally, resources produced as a result of USDA Residue Avoidance Program projects are listed in the database. Access to the databank is available at three regional access centers in California (916-752-7507), Illinois (217-333-3611) and Florida (904-392-4085), while the databank is maintained at a data analysis and support center in North Carolina. FARAD presently contains over 7,000 records with information on 250 compounds, and is supported by the USDA-Extension Service's Residue Avoidance Program.

The specific apparent capacitance (Farads per unit geometric area) of commercial carbon microdisc electrodes and in-house fabricated carbon microcylinders is studied through the use of cyclic voltammetry. Home-made microcylinder electrodes exhibit lower specific apparent capacitances and as a result facilitate lower limits of detection. We further demonstrate practically how the electroanalytical limit of the detection of solution phase trace oxygen is significantly improved using such microcylinder electrodes. Finally we show that after the degassing of a solution by nitrogen purging even in the most commonly encountered ‘best’ case scenarios approximately tens of μM of oxygen remain present in the electrochemical cell, unobservable by the commercial microdisc electrodes, but detectable with microcylinder electrodes, testifying to their analytical superiority.

In this manuscript we report about the realization and testing of a high-voltage electrochemical double layer capacitor (EDLC) prototype (IES prototype), which has been assembled using innovative electrode and electrolyte components. The IES prototype displays a nominal capacitance of 4 F, a maximum voltage of 3.2 V and its maximal energy and power are in the order of 37 Wh kg −1 and 65 kW kg −1 , respectively. Furthermore, it also displays good cycling stability, high capacitance retention after 80 h float test and acceptable self-discharge. Taking into account substantial improvements of the cell design and assembly procedure, the performance of the IES prototype indicates that the components utilized in this device might be suitable alternatives to the state-of-the-art materials used in high energy EDLCs.

The porous nature of the electrode material in supercapacitors and the apparent conductivity of their electrolyte cause their impedance to show a complex frequency-dependent behavior, which in turn makes it incorrect to treat them as ideal capacitors even at a few millihertz frequency. This is particularly crucial if the intended application requires a configuration using stacked supercapacitor banks, where errors in defining the metrics of the individual components accumulate. While manufacturers provide supercapacitor ratings at DC only, we show using a detailed impedance spectroscopy study of all possible series and parallel combinations of two different commercial 1 Farad carbon-carbon supercapacitors, that these nominal DC capacitances are not suitable to evaluate the equivalent capacitance. Instead, using a model consisting of a series resistance and a constant phase element, we employ a real effective capacitance (in proper Farad units) suitable for direct application. This effective capacitance can be used to define a frequency-dependent quality factor of a supercapacitor, and enables the easy calculation of series and parallel associations of identical or different devices.

In this paper, we report on the recent development of a 64-channel low-noise front-end readout ASIC for CdZnTe detectors aimed to hard X-ray imaging systems. The readout channel is comprised of a charge sensitive amplifier, a leakage current compensation circuit, a CR-RC shaper, two S–K filters, an inverse proportional amplifier, a peak-detect-and-hold circuit, a discriminator and trigger logic, a time sequence control circuit and a driving buffer. The readout ASIC is implemented in TSMC 0.35 μm mixed-signal CMOS technology, the die size of the prototype chip is 2.7 mm×8.0 mm. The overall gain of the readout channel is 200 mV/fC, the power consumption is less than 8 mW/channel, the linearity error is less than 1%, the inconsistency among the channels is less than 2.86%, and the equivalent noise charge of a typical channel is 66 e − at zero farad plus 14 e − per picofarad. By connecting this readout ASIC to an 8×8 pixel CdZnTe detector, we obtained an energy spectrum, the energy resolution of which is 4.5% at the 59.5 keV line of 241 Am source.

Please make the page settings of your word processor to A4 format (21 x 29,7 cm or 8 x 11 inches); with the margins: bottom 1.5 cm (0.59 in) and top 2.5 cm (0.98 in), right/left margins must be 2 cm (0.78 in)This paper is based on a project is entitled “Implementation of a Test Bed for Supercapacitor Testing and Evaluation” that is intended to perform tests and evaluate the behavior and characteristics supercapacitors. The test bed can perform charging and discharging of different types of supercapacitors. This implementation serves to automatically acquire the data from the testing procedure and plot in real time the graphs for monitoring the charging and discharging behaviour. From there, the test bed can determine the two significant characteristics of the supercapacitor, which are the capacitance value in Farad and the equivalent series resistance (ESR) in Ohm. The capacitance value is obtained using the measurements taken during the discharging process while the ESR is determined by measurements taken when it is charged using a constant current. The test bed can select between different modes of charging depending of the type of supercapacitor put to test. It can measure and evaluate capacitance ranges from 0.1F to 10F. This paper will discuss the methodologies that the test bed implements for testing the supercapacitors, and the results obtained from evaluation of several types of supercapacitors. We shall be able to publish your paper in electronic form on our web page http://www.scientific.net, if the paper format and the margins are correct. Your manuscript will be reduced by approximately 20% by the publisher. Please keep this in mind when designing your figures and tables etc. It is found the test bed can approximately read the values of supercapacitors that have low ESR ranges.

This paper presents the design and the performance of a low-noise front-end readout application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) dedicated to CZT detectors for a hard X-ray imager. A cascode amplifier based on split-let topology is proposed to realize the charge-sensitive amplifier (CSA) for the sake of a single positive power supply. A leakage-current-compensation circuit is added to suppress the maximum leakage current of 10nA. The output of the CSA is connected to a CR-RC shaper. In the timing branch, the output of the CSA is followed by a fast shaper for the trigger acquisition. A digital monostable circuit is designed to adjust the delay of trigger signals so that the peak value of the shaped voltage signals can be tracked. The sampled voltages are stored into an analog memory. A radiation-hardened-by-design methodology is proposed to achieve the radiation hardness for the space applications. A 16-channel front-end readout ASIC is designed and implemented in TSMC 0.35µm CMOS process. The die size is 2.12mm×4.60mm. The input range of the ASIC is from 4k e- to 140k e-, which is suitable for the detection of the gamma ray from 20keV to 650keV. The ASIC has been tested. The gain of the readout channel is typically 81.4mV/fC. The equivalent noise charge (ENC) is 50 e- at zero farad plus 18 e- per picofarad. The nonlinearity is less than 3%. The crosstalk is less than 2%. The static power dissipation is about 16.5mW plus 10.6mW/channel. In addition, the tested results show that the proposed ASIC can resist larger than 200krad(Si) TID irradiation.

Producers and veterinarians are considered responsible for improving animal welfare, as they are responsible for implementing practices that directly impact the animal&rsquo, s well-being. Most husbandry procedures performed in cattle do not include pain mitigation, and understanding challenges faced by these stakeholders to use analgesics is key in improving on-farm pain management strategies. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to explore producer and veterinarian perspectives on pain management practices by (1) exploring inquires received by Food Animal Residue Avoidance Databank (FARAD) regarding analgesic use in cattle and (2) using a survey instrument to identify factors that impact pain management implementation in the US cattle industry. Albeit analgesia use increased in the past ten years for some producers and the majority of veterinarians, administering analgesics for pain management on US cattle farms remains a challenge. From a producer perspective, drug cost, availability and logistics for administration. From a veterinarian perspective, lack of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) products hinders the support of on-farm protocols requiring extra-label drug use. Future steps to improve analgesic use on-farm include identifying and approving drugs that demonstrate efficacy for managing pain in cattle and disseminating educational resources to support stakeholders in both the implementation and drug withdrawal process.

This paper presents the implementation of an electronic fully-digital impedance bridge optimized for RC comparisons with equal impedance magnitudes, together with an evaluation of the uncertainty. This bridge has been designed with the goal of realizing the farad directly from the quantum Hall effect with a bridge uncertainty component at the 10−7 level. Thanks to its simple design, ease of operation and affordability, this bridge is suitable to be industrially manufactured. Together with the increasing availability of graphene quantum Hall resistance standards, this can provide an affordable quantum realization of the unit farad for metrology institutes and calibration centres. In this paper we present the uncertainty budget of an example measurement and the results of the validation of the bridge against a suitably modified version of the traceability chain of the Italian national standard of capacitance. The combined uncertainty of the bridge resulted from repeated measurements (overall measurement time of about 200 min) is 9.2 × 10−8, suitable for the primary realization of the unit of capacitance from a quantized Hall resistance standard. The crosstalk among the channels of the electrical generator is the most significant uncertainty component, possibly reducible with internal shielding and filtering of the electronic generator.

The purpose of this study is to understand the change of the SiPM structure after irradiation. We compared the profile of the electric field in the SiPM (KETEK) active region for ten not-irradiated and irradiated detectors. The standard method of measurement of C-V characteristics was applied using two configurations (serial and parallel circuit) to exclude the influence of the serial resistance. Dependencies of capacitance on the frequency were studied in the range from 10 to 1000 KHz. For non-irradiated detectors we detected in CV characteristics the local instability basically connected with accumulation of charge on boundary optical isolation-silicon. In addition, the hysteresis of CV characteristics was detected. For irradiated detectors the local instability was visible as well but the hysteresis of CV characteristics was not detected. The results demonstrate that the applied method can be used for the relative analysis of how SiPM active region properties changed after irradiation.

The Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) is an international organization which works to promote and advance a coherent system of measurements throughout the world, traceable to the International System of Units (SI). One of its activities consists of the dissemination of units and the comparison of national measurement standards, which requires the availability of well-known and well-characterized standards. In particular, in the field of electricity, the BIPM supports capacitance measurements based on a quantum reference, impedance bridges and stable transfer standards, establishing traceability to the defining fundamental constants of the SI. In this paper it will be explained how the farad is realized at the BIPM, including a general description of the measuring systems, and how this unit is maintained.

Redistribution layer (RDL) first is advantageous to enhance the total yield of fan out wafer level package (FOWLP) and fan out panel level package (FOPLP). The key to success is a cost effective testing to assure reliability of known good RDL prior to KGD attachment. This paper shows a cost effective single-sided open/short testing utilized femto farad capacitance tester. The capacitive test vehicle performed RDL includes fine pitched of line width/line spacing 2um/2um for a glass carrier panel level package. The result shows the throughput advantage than double-sided resistance based open/shot test.

A national traceability chain from dc quantum Hall resistance (QHR) to capacitance has been established at KRISS using various impedance standards and ac coaxial bridges. Two bridges developed by INRiM, were employed: a quadrature bridge, calibrating 1000 pF capacitors versus 103 kΩ ac resistors and a ratio bridge, linking the ac resistor values to an ac-dc calculable resistor calibrated in terms of the dc QHR. The capacitance value obtained with the new traceability chain showed an agreement (a few parts in ${10}^{7}$ ) in a comparison with the scale maintained at National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST, USA).

A new calculable cross-capacitor and associated impedance measurement chain is being built at the National Measurement Institute Australia (NMIA). The new system is intended to reduce the uncertainty of the farad as realised by a calculable capacitor to a few parts in 109, an order of magnitude improvement on existing calculable capacitor systems. We report here on recent progress on the assembly of the calculable capacitor, specifically the measurement of the frequency dependent correction, and the final alignment of the electrodes.

Transient voltage suppressors (TVS) are widely used for electrostatic discharge (ESD) and surge protection of electronic devices. Especially the usage of mobile devices for wireless communications requires extremely high production quantities in the range of multi-billion pieces of TVS per year. This article gives an introduction to the key performance parameters of different TVS technologies with low parasitic capacitance in the picofarad and sub-picofarad range, such as gas discharge tubes (GDT), polymer voltage suppressors (PVS), multi-layer varistors (MLV) and silicon TVS.

Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) determines the dielectric permittivity of the interior object depending on the measurements of exterior capacitance. Generally, the electrodes are placed outside the PVC cylinder where the medium to be imaged is present; but in ECT using inter-electrode capacitance measurements can be achieved by placing inside of the dielectric medium. In the proposed ECT system, the ECT sensor is modeled using ANSYS software and the model is implemented in real ECT system. For each step of measurement, a stable AC signal is applied to a pair of electrodes that form a capacitor. The novel system is to measure the capacitance range variation in picofarad and the corresponding voltage ranges from 1 volt to 4 volts. The switching speed of all combinational electrodes is implemented using embedded system to achieve higher speed performance of AC ECT system which eliminates the drift and stray capacitance error. This is yielding the original image of unknown multiphase medium inside the electrodes using Lab VIEW. This paper investigates several advantages such as improved overall system performance; simple structure, avoids stray capacitance effect, reduces the drift problem and achieves high signal to noise ratio.

In this paper, we present the development and performances of a radiation-hardened front-end readout application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) dedicated to CZT detectors for a hard X-ray imager in space applications. The readout channel consists of a charge sensitive amplifier (CSA), a CR-RC shaper, a fast shaper, a discriminator and a driving buffer. With the additional digital filtering, the readout channel can achieve very low noise performances and low power dissipation. An eight-channel prototype ASIC is designed and fabricated in 0.35 μm CMOS process. The energy range of the detected X-rays is evaluated as 1.45 keV to 281 keV. The gain is larger than 100 mV/fC. The equivalent noise charge (ENC) of the ASIC is 53 e − at zero farad plus 10 e − per picofarad. The power dissipation is less than 4.4 mW/channel. Through the measurement with a CZT detector, the energy resolution is less than 3.45 keV (FWHM) under the irradiation of the radioactive source 241 Am. The radiation effect experiments indicate that the proposed ASIC can resist the total ionization dose (TID) irradiation of higher than 200 krad (Si).

This paper proposes a fingerprint sensor cell and driver architecture based on a charge integration scheme. The fingerprint sensor cell uses an active output voltage feedback (AOVF) integrator as a capacitance-to-voltage converter. A multiple integration scheme is suggested to improve signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and amplify the sensing signal, which enables a simple and robust fingerprint sensor driver architecture. A prototype fingerprint sensor array of 1x64 is implemented with an AOVF integrator. The performances of the proposed fingerprint sensor were simulated with standard 0.35μm CMOS technology. By simulations, the proposed fingerprint sensor senses even sub-femto farad differences and has large sensing voltage range.

A custom-made modular high-precision dielectric spectrometer for quantifying aging-induced molecular changes in (sub-)picofarad polymeric samples is presented. Validation and characterization of the setup’s performance is obtained by quantifying the change in the dielectric response of an epoxy polymer following the exposure to thermal, hygrothermal and ultraviolet radiation stress. It is shown that the observed changes in the dielectric spectra can be resolved with a relative precision better than 5∙10-5 and are in line with previous studies employing commercial instruments on samples of higher capacitance. This setup is intended to serve as a blueprint for a sensitive and extensible (because modular) measurement tool for studying the pre-breakdown dynamics in low-capacitance recessed or disc-shaped specimens as used, e.g., in high-voltage insulation testing., IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation, 25 (3), ISSN:1070-9878, ISSN:1558-4135