We have noticed in papers suggesting the performance characterisation of nanogenerators by measuring the voltage & current across various resistors. Do we have to use individual resistor or is it via any instruments?
Sreenidhi,
Well, typically you have measure the current from a generator with a vanishingly small resistor - measuring the voltage drop and inferring the current.
This can be a single device or an array of parallel devices. It doesn't matter.
Hi Sreenidhi: You can do it either way. The idea is to make a plot of Voltage vs. Current. This plot can be used to determine the resistor value that generates the highest power output. You might look into how that's done to characterize solar panels.
Have Fun,
Brooke
Resistors of any size pose significant problems when measuring extremely small output levels of both current and voltage. The losses over the resistors can severely skew the measurements.
A better method is to measure the total charge over a restricted time period by depositing the generator output onto a suitable low-leakage capacitor and measuring the accumulated voltage with a high input resistance buffer amplifier.
A simple calculation will give you the output currents of the generator.
Thank you for the quick response @ Ian @James@Brooke
@Brooke... Sir is there any specific instrument like impedance analyser or electrochemical workstation to perform the same... Because its tedious to measure voltage individually
Specialised integrated circuits exist in this field. It may be worth looking at the data sheet for the AD8304. The product description starts : 'The AD8304 is a monolithic logarithmic detector optimized for the measurement of low frequency signal power in fiber optic systems'.
Note the use of logarithmic conversion in the analog domain.
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