The Vernier Current Driver is an ultra low noise, programmable, bi-polar current source. It comes in two flavours:
- Low Current Driver (LCD): designed to output current up to ~50 mA
- High Current Driver (HCD): designed to output currents from ~50 mA to ~250 mA
Checkout the latest release to download the latest verified version of the design. Releases include PDF schematics and gerber files, so there is no need to install/understand KiCAD in order to make a board.
Checkout the dev branch for the most up to date (but probably untested!) design.
Three sample devices have been tested. For full details, see the companion paper or take a look a look in the Testing folder.
The headlines results:
| Configuration | CH1 | CH2 | CH3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| LCD@10 mAMAX (10 ± 5 Hz average noise) | 151.1 pA√Hz | 147.4 pA√Hz | 146.3 pA√Hz |
| LCD@2.5 mAMAX (10 ± 5 Hz average noise) | 37.6 pA√Hz | 38.2 pA√Hz | 37.7 pA√Hz |
| HCD@250 mAMAX (10 ± 5 Hz average noise) | 4114.2 pA√Hz | 4125.3 pA√Hz | 4124.1 pA√Hz |
| LCD@10 mAMAX (10 ± 5 Hz relative average noise) | 15.05 ppb√Hz | 14.68 ppb√Hz | 14.57 ppb√Hz |
| LCD@2.5 mAMAX (10 ± 5 Hz relative average noise) | 15.06 ppb√Hz | 15.29 ppb√Hz | 15.10 ppb√Hz |
| HCD@250 mAMAX (10 ± 5 Hz relative average noise) | 16.46 ppb√Hz | 16.50 ppb√Hz | 16.50 ppb√Hz |
For more information checkout the Getting Started Guide.
If you're the academic type, lots more detail on the design and testing of the Vernier Current Source can be found in our open-access paper, available as a pre-print on arXiv.
When citing this work in an academic context, please cite the paper as you normally would.
Outside of academic work, please link directly to this GitHub repo.
Lastly, if you make one and you like it (or don't like it), we would love to know!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This work was created by Marcin Mrozowski and Iain Chalmers from the Experimental Quantum Optics and Photonics group at the University of Strathclyde.