Most electronic manufacturers face a common set of business problems. Global competition exerts downward pressure on prices, while increasing the features and functionality of products. This takes place within ever-shortening product life cycles. Narrowing profit margins then drive efforts to reduce product costs wherever possible. This includes the cost of testing, which tends to grow with product complexity.

The explosive growth in the computer, telecommunications, and automotive electronics industries continues to drive efforts to minimize component size and speed high-volume production. This is placing similar demands on component manufacturers. In the resistive devices market segment, discrete resistors continue to maintain a strong position, but resistor networks are growing rapidly because they offer high functionality while conserving precious PC board space.

High impedance insulators are an integral part of today’s high performance electronic products. The purity of the materials used to construct these insulators can make the difference between a product that works properly and one that doesn’t work at all. The accepted method of measuring high resistance is to apply a large voltage to a sample and measure the small currents stimulated through that sample. However, for high resistance samples, the levels of current that must be measured are extremely low, so testing these materials accurately and repeatably can be a challenge. Other current sources, such as piezoelectric effects or discharging capacitive elements, can obscure the stimulated current one wishes to observe in order to calculate resistance and surface and volume resistivity. This paper presents a method for selectively measuring a stimulated current in the presence of other currents that may be five to ten times the magnitude of the stimulated current.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a form of digital modulation used in a wide array of communications systems. This paper will explain what OFDM is, why it’s important, where it’s used, and what test instrumentation is required to maintain it.

Moore’s Law states that circuit density will double every 18 months. However, in order to maintain this rate of increase, there must be fundamental changes in the way circuits are formed. Over the past few years, there have been significant and exciting developments in nanotechnology, particularly in the areas of nanoelectronics and molecular electronic (also called moletronic) devices. The 2001 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors projects that by 2004, devices should shrink to 0.09 micron (90nm) structures, the upper end of the nanostructure size range. However, a few semiconductor companies that claim to be fabricating devices smaller than 100nm are already challenging that level.

Low voltage measurements are often associated with resistance measurements of highly conductive semiconductor materials and devices. These tests normally involve sourcing a known current, measuring the resulting voltage, and calculating the resistance using Ohm’s Law. Because of the DUT’s inherent low resistance, the resulting voltage will be very small and great care needs to be taken to reduce offset voltage and noise, which can normally be ignored when measuring higher signal levels.