Measurement of the frequency dependence of four terminal-pair air capacitors with a vector network analyzer

Published

October 6, 2023

Author(s)

Stephan Schlamminger, Andrew D. Koffman, James W. Schmidt, Bryan C. Waltrip, Yicheng Wang

Abstract

Four terminal-pair air capacitors are important transfer standards to calibrate LCR meters up to a frequency of 10 MHz. We report a simple and new method to obtain the frequency dependence of the four terminal-pair capacitance of these standards using a four-channel vector network analyzer (VNA). The frequency dependence of the capacitance of an air capacitor and its uncertainty can be obtained from a single set of measurements without changing connections between the standard and the VNA, as has been the case in previously published work. The calculation of the frequency dependency is straightforward and model-independent. Nevertheless, an elementary model is provided to explain the observed frequency dependence. This article allows every laboratory with a four-channel VNA to measure the frequency dependence of these capacitors. Hence, a significant shortening of the traceability chain is achieved.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement

Volume

73

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/TIM.2023.3322503

Local Download

Keywords

electrical metrology, calibration , four terminal-pair, capacitance

Citation

Schlamminger, S. , Koffman, A. , Schmidt, J. , Waltrip, B. and Wang, Y. (2023), Measurement of the frequency dependence of four terminal-pair air capacitors with a vector network analyzer, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/TIM.2023.3322503, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=956303 (Accessed October 27, 2025)