An FPGA-based System for Generalised Electron Devices Testing

TL;DR

This paper presents an FPGA-based versatile testing system capable of performing multiple electronic component measurements with high precision, compactness, and affordability, addressing the increasing complexity of modern electronic components.

Contribution

The work introduces a general-purpose FPGA-based testing platform with a 64-channel source-meter and digital I/O, enabling diverse measurements in a compact, cost-effective instrument.

Findings

Achieved a 170 pA current noise floor.

Delivered 40 ns pulse at ±13.5 V.

Successfully performed IV, memristor read-out, and DAC INL tests.

Abstract

Electronic systems are becoming more and more ubiquitous as our world digitises. Simultaneously, even basic components are experiencing a wave of improvements with new transistors, memristors, voltage/current references, data converters, etc, being designed every year by hundreds of R&D groups world-wide. To date, the workhorse for testing all these designs has been a suite of lab instruments including oscilloscopes and signal generators, to mention the most popular. However, as components become more complex and pin numbers soar, the need for more parallel and versatile testing tools also becomes more pressing. In this work, we describe and benchmark an FPGA system developed that addresses this need. This general purpose testing system features a 64-channel source-meter unit (SMU), and 2x banks of 32 digital pins for digital I/O. We demonstrate that this bench-top system can obtain $170 pA$ current noise floor, $40 ns$ pulse delivery at $\pm13.5 V$ and $12 mA$ maximum current drive/channel. We then showcase the instrument's use in performing a selection of three characteristic measurement tasks: a) current-voltage (IV) characterisation of a diode and a transistor, b) fully parallel read-out of a memristor crossbar array and c) an integral non-linearity (INL) test on a DAC. This work introduces a down-scaled electronics laboratory packaged in a single instrument which provides a shift towards more affordable, reliable, compact and multi-functional instrumentation for emerging electronic technologies.