We report on high-accuracy measurements of quantized current, sourced by a tunable-barrier single-electron pump at frequencies f up to 1 GHz. The measurements were performed with a new picoammeter instrument, traceable to the Josephson and quantum Hall effects. Current quantization according to I = ef with e the elementary charge was confirmed at f = 545 MHz with a total relative uncertainty of 0.2 ppm, improving the state of the art by about a factor of 5. For the first time, the accuracy of a possible future quantum current standard based on single-electron transport was experimentally validated to be better than the best realization of the ampere within the present SI.
We report on characterizations of single-electron pumps at the highest accuracy level, enabled by improvements of the small-current measurement technique. With these improvements a new accuracy record in measurements on single-electron pumps is demonstrated: 0.16 µA • A −1 of relative combined uncertainty was reached within less than 1 d of measurement time. Additionally, robustness tests of pump operation on a sub-ppm level revealed a good stability of tunable-barrier single-electron pumps against variations in the operating parameters.
In this paper research activities developed within the FutureCom project are presented. The project, funded by the European Metrology Programme for Innovation and Research (EMPIR), aims at evaluating and characterizing: (i) active devices, (ii) signal-and power integrity of field programmable gate array (FPGA) circuits, (iii) operational performance of electronic circuits in real-world and harsh environments (e.g. below and above ambient temperatures and at different levels of humidity), (iv) passive inter-modulation (PIM) in communication systems considering different values of temperature and humidity corresponding to the typical operating conditions that we can experience in real-world scenarios. An overview of the FutureCom project is provided here, then the research activities are described.
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