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Well, it's at a 1mA test current (I'm assuming a 4 point probe to mitigate contact resistance) so 10u Ohm would give a 10nV DC signal. That's a pretty small voltage signal and comparable to a fairly standard chopper stabilized instrumentation amp rms noise at room temp near DC.

I'm not sure whether higher currents are all that reasonable. Cooling the precision amp is an option to reduce the noise figure, but at that point you'll want optical isolation and battery supply too.

https://www.analog.com/media/en/training-seminars/tutorials/...



A comment above says they are using https://www.qdusa.com/products/ppms.html with the DC 4-wire option.

All my instincts would prefer they were using the AC 4-wire option, given any reason to question results, and/or issues with contact effects, etc.


Thanks! That's great information. We had to make our own, but it's good to see that there are decent off the shelf systems. I agree that contact resistance on these tiny samples has got to be a huge issue (can they use mercury?). However, what I've seen suggests that even the low frequency AC measurements are more complex due to capacitive coupling effects. However, narrow bandwidth lock=in should improve noise... the equipment still just claims 10u Ohm.


[flagged]


Yeah, I ran low temp STM/BEEM systems in UHV for 4 years at JPL's MDL.

I assume you know what that means. Even today low frequency nV signals are still hard. Did you know you can do zero-bias tunneling sensing?


Glorious to watch




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