Robert Green

Thermocouples are far and away the most widely used type of temperature sensor because they are both rugged and relatively inexpensive. They operate based on the thermoelectric or Seebeck effect (named after physicist Thomas Seebeck). When two wires made up of dissimilar metals are joined…

Reliable temperature measurements are essential to a wide range of test and measurement applications—from power supply burn-in to plant/environment monitoring and control and thousands of others in between.

Source measurement unit instruments (or SMU instruments) can make the job of characterizing linear voltage regulators—both conventional and low dropout (LDO) regulators—easier.

Source measurement units (SMUs) are instruments that can source current and measure voltage or source voltage and measure current. Since their introduction more than 20 years ago, they have evolved into multi-purpose instruments that meet the needs of an expanding array of test applications,…

Characterizing electronic devices such as field-effect transistors (FETs) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can be a challenge because it requires making measurements of very low currents, often at or below the noise level of the test system.

Engineers have been using Hall effect measurements to characterize materials since Edwin Hall discovered the phenomenon in 1879. The Hall effect is the generation of a voltage, called the Hall voltage, across a sample of a material when that sample is exposed to a combination of a magnetic field…

Lately, we at Keithley have been seeing a lot of interest in nanotechnology, and research laboratories in universities and in semiconductor companies are developing new nanomaterials, such as graphene.

The increased use of portable and remote electronic devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers, in combination with the desire to conserve battery power, is driving semiconductor manufacturers to develop devices that operate at extremely low current levels.