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Device for nA Measurements ?

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Nicole01:
Hello Everyone,

i would like to know how you make Measurements in the nA Range ?

Which Devices can you recommend here ?
You can't do that with a normal Multimeter.

Even with most Benchtop Multimeters it is not possible.

What Experiences have you here ?

Many Thanks
Nicole

bdunham7:
There are many variations, but I use one of these:

Nicole01:
Thanks for your Help and the Info.

I'm looking for a newer Device.
It would be good if it was already Digital  :-+

bdunham7:
Well, as I said there are many variations.  At the other extreme from my very old model, there are:

https://www.tek.com/en/products/keithley/low-level-sensitive-and-specialty-instruments/series-6400-picoammeters

It depends on what your specific requirements and budget are.  The active inputs on typical picoammeters result in a low voltage drop (burden voltage) across them, only a few mV in the case of my ancient 414A.  If that doesn't matter and you have a higher-voltage high-impedance source you want to measure, a 10M input voltmeter actually works with 1V = 100nA.  Also, there are some cheap converter units like the uCurrent from EEVBlog's Dave Jones and the Current Ranger, a sort of knock off.  I don't know much about those two, but they've been discussed here at length and you can search for them.

Performa01:
Most DMMs with 10 Mohms input impedance can be used for this in principle.

Just use the voltage range, e.g. 200 mV instead of the current ranges. This becomes a 20 nA range and you can measure down to 10 pA with a 20000 count meter.

Some (especially true bench) meters have an unexpected high input current up to 1 nA. You can detect this by measuring the open circuit voltage with 10 Mohm input impedance; thus the meters own input current. If this is anywhere above 50 pA (= 0.5 mV), then the meter isn't usable for this purpose.

Of course, the "correct" way to do this is using an electrometer; this allows you to measure down to the femtoamperes...

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