Modular time division multiplexer: Efficient simultaneous characterization of fast and slow transients in multiple samples

A modular time divisionmultiplexer (MTDM) device is introduced to enable parallelmeasurement of multiple samples with both fast and slow decay transients spanning from millisecond to month-long time scales. This is achieved by dedicating a single high-speedmeasurement instrument for rapid data collection at the start of a transient, and bymultiplexing a second low-speedmeasurement instrument for slow data collection of several samples in parallel for the later transients. The MTDM is a high-level design concept that can in principlemeasure an arbitrary number of samples, and the low cost implementation here allows up to 16 samples to bemeasured in parallel over several months, reducing the total ensemblemeasurement duration and equipment usage by as much as an order of magnitude without sacrificing fidelity. The MTDM was successfully demonstrated by simultaneouslymeasuring thephotoconductivity of threeamorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide thin films with 20 ms data resolution for fast transients and an uninterrupted parallel run time of over 20 days. The MTDM has potential applications in many areas of research that manifest response times spanning many orders of magnitude, such as photovoltaics, rechargeable batteries,amorphous semiconductors such assilicon andamorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide.

Source: Review of Scientific Instruments - September 30, 2016 Category: Physics Authors: Stephan D. Kim, Jiajun Luo, D. Bruce Buchholz, R. P. H. Chang and M. Grayson Source Type: research