PXIe SMU remote sensing capabilities

[proland1121]

hello,

I was wondering if NI's PXIe SMU line has the option of validating remote sense continuity.  Keithley SMUs refer to this as a "contact check" where the resistance is evaluated from "Force High to Sense High" and again from "Force Low to Sense Low", thereby verifying that the 4-wire connection exists at the Load and that the resistance is below a desired threshold.

[nestorl]

Hi proland1121,

You can read more about our SMUs' remote sensing capabilities here.

[proland1121]

Hi Lindsey,

Thanks for the reply but that general information page doesn't provide the level of detail required to answer the question.  My main concern is the section which states "Configuring a channel for remote sense operation without connecting the sense leads to the DUT can result in measurements that do not meet the published specifications. If a channel is configured for remote sense and the remote sense leads are left open, the channel may source a voltage higher than the voltage level or voltage limit.

If I am using a probe card with 4 pins and the pin for Sense High becomes bent due to wear,operator error, or manufacturing error, the situation of "sense lead left open" occurs.  Is there a way to detect this scenario?  Measuring resistance between the Force/Sense pairs would identify such a scenario, but I haven't seen any such function in the NI-DC Power functions.

If no such function exists, I think i'll probably have to add in a switch matrix and a DMM (to measure resistance) for performing periodic checks.

[nestorl]

To my knowledge, the NI-DC Power driver doesn't have any built-in functions that monitor those connections continuously. The switch + DMM application you mentioned seems like a good alternative.

[MCCurtis]

Some NI SMUs (including PXIe-4135 and PXIe-4137) have this capability. It's called sense lead error detection.

https://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/370736U01/ni_dc_power_supplies_help/senseleaderrordetection...

Matthew Curtis

Applications Engineer

National Instruments