A Test Architecture and VIE to Characterize Dielectric Absorption in Small Capacitors

This paper presents an automated procedure to characterize dielectric absorption (DA) in small discrete and integrated capacitors. A circuit setup with integrating, active filtering, and amplifying stages was developed along with a Lab VIEW™ virtual instrument environment (VIE) to perform completely automated DA tests. The setup's precision and accuracy were validated by statistical means. Evaluations of the proposed setup over a wide range of test conditions, capacitance values, and capacitor technologies were performed.