NIST RESEARCHERS TWO STEPS CLOSER TO ELECTRON-COUNTING CAPACITANCE STANDARD

摘要

A team of NIST scientists in collaboration with an intern from the University of Maryland, has made two advances in the development of cryogenic capacitors for use with the Electron-Counting Capacitance Standard (ECCS). The ECCS is being developed as a quantum-based representation of capacitance. It relies on pumping a precisely counted number of electrons onto the plates of a cryogenic capacitor and measuring the resultant charging voltage. About 100 million electrons are required to reach the desired voltage. Besides providing a "turnkey" primary capacitance representation, the ECCS will also provide an alternate route for experimental determination of the fine-structure constant.