Electronic – Unwanted capacitance in measurement setup – what to consider

capacitancecurrent measurement

I have a current measurement setup (which supposed to measure < 1nA). It has 20 channels and switched using a relay matrix.

Using a LCR meter I measured for one channel (In the schematic below, removing capacitor and putting LCR probes in series), and it happend in open mode, the whole setup capacitance is 6pF and if a chanel is closed (Obviously when taking a measurement, the respective channel is closed) the capacitance is around 50pF

enter image description here

I really would like to know how this capacitance (which I beleive comes accumulated from 22 coaxial cables, roughly 20 meters and count the internal wiring of test setup) can affect/contribute to my measurement? What is the theory behind it (I want to study it further) and possible workarounds?

Here is the schematic of my setup:

enter image description here

Best Answer

  • Use a star point for ground; with such small currents, the smallest impedance in the wire will distort your measurement.
  • Terminate your coax cables properly; your coax cables are highly frequency dependend when you don't.
  • You might want to use a high impedance amplifier near the device under test (DUT), like an active probe, FET-probe or something similar to drive the cables.
  • When measuring such small signals, you might want to try to change the setup into a bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheatstone_bridge
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