Establishing Measurement Integration Time for Leakage Currents

The proliferation of mobile wireless devices drives a corresponding demand for components going into these devices. A key attribute of these components is the need to have low levels of leakage current during off and standby mode operation, to extend the battery run-time of the host device. I brought up the importance of making accurate leakage currents quickly in an earlier posting “Pay Attention to the Impact of the Bypass Capacitor on Leakage Current Value and Test Time”(click here to review). Another key aspect about making accurate leakage currents quickly is establishing the proper minimum required measurement integration time. I will go into factors that govern establishing this time here.

Assuming the leakage current being drawn by the DUT, as well as any bypass capacitors on the fixture, have fully stabilized, the key thing with selecting the correct measurement integration time is getting an acceptable level of measurement repeatability. Some experimentation is useful in determining the minimum required amount of time. The primary problem with leakage current measurement is one of AC noise sources present in the test set up. With DC leakage current being just a few micro amps or less these noises are significant. Higher level currents can be usually measured much more quickly as the AC noises are relatively negligible in comparison. There are a variety of potential noise sources, including radiated and conducted from external sources, including the AC line, and internal noise sources, such as the AC ripple voltage from the DC source’s output. This is illustrated in Figure 1 below. Noise currents directly add to the DC leakage current while noise voltages become corresponding noise currents related by the DUT and test fixture load impedance.

Figure 1: Some noise sources affecting DUT current measurement time

Using a longer measurement time integrates out the peak-to-peak random deviations in the DC leakage current to provide a consistently more repeatable DC measurement result, but at the expense of increasing overall device test time. Measurement repeatability should be based on a statistical confidence level, which I will do into more detail further on. Using a measurement integration time of exactly one power line cycle (1 PLC) of 20 milliseconds (for 50 Hz) or 16.7 milliseconds (for 60 Hz) cancels out AC line frequency noises. Many times a default time of 100 milliseconds is used as it is an integer multiple of both 20 and 16.7 milliseconds. This is fine if overall DUT test time is relatively long but generally not acceptable when total test time is just a couple of seconds, as is the case with most components. As a minimum, setting the measurement integration time to 1 PLC is usually the prudent thing to do when short overall DUT test time is paramount.

Reducing leakage current test time below 1 PLC means reducing any AC line frequency noises to a sufficiently low level such that they are relatively negligible compared to higher frequency noises, like possibly the DC source’s wideband output ripple noise voltage and current. Proper grounding, shielding, and cancellation techniques can greatly reduce noise pickup. Paying attention to the choice and size of bypass capacitors used on the test fixture is also important. A larger-than-necessary bypass capacitor can increase measured noise current when the measuring is taking place before the capacitor, which is many times the case. Establishing the requirement minimum integration time is done by setting a setting an acceptable statistical confidence level and then running a trial with a large number of measurements plotted in a histogram to assure that they fall within this confidence level for a given measurement integration time. If they did not then the measurement integration time would need to be increased. As an example I ran a series of trials to determine what the acceptable minimum required integration time was for achieving 10% repeatability with 95% confidence for a 2 micro amp leakage current. AC line noises were relatively negligible. As shown in Figure 2, when a large series of measurements were taken and plotted in a histogram, 95% of the values fell within +/- 9.5% of the mean for a measurement integration time of 1.06 milliseconds.

Figure 2: 2 Leakage current measurement repeatability histogram example

Leakage current measurements by nature take longer to measure due to their extremely low levels. Careful attention to minimizing noise and establishing the minimum required measurement integration time contributes toward improving the test throughput of components that take just seconds to test.