A New Low Cost Current Measurement Circuit with Temperature Compensation

Abstract

The electrical characterization of semiconductors devices, when submitted to ionizing radiation should be done in a large range of currents; however, the instrumentation with this ability is very expensive. This work proposes a low-cost circuit using commercial off-the-shelf components (COTS) that enables the measurement of electrical currents in the order of pA range. The circuit presents an output current that is an amplified version of the current to be measured, using the exponential relationship between currents and voltages in Bipolar Junction Transistors (BJTs) and Metal Oxide Silicon Field Effect Transistors (MOSFETs) when operating in the weak inversion region. Furthermore, a block was introduced in order to compensate the gain’s temperature dependence. The results showed that the operating range for the current that will be measured was more than seven decades using BJTs and five decades by using MOSFETs with a high linearity. The circuit version using MOSFETs was able to measure currents as low as 100 fA. The current gain has also good linearity for over five decades. This circuit has a stable behavior for the range of 20 °C to 40 °C, because of the temperature compensation block.