Arbin Instruments' SCTS is designed for research and development of capacitors, supercapacitors, and ultracapacitors in a variety of applications. It can perform charge/discharge cycling, DC-ESR and DC-EPR tests, leakage current measurement, capacitance testing, cyclic voltammetry, and other common capacitor tests.
SCTS features multiple completely independent chanels that allow users to test multiple capacitors or modules simultaneously.
Arbin's SCTS is the most advanced cpcacitor testing system on the market today.
Flexible Control Types including constant current, voltage, load and power; as well as, linear ramp, staircase, formula and other control profiles
Completely Independent Channels allow users to run multiple independant tests simultaneously without affecting what is happening on the other channels
Industry Leading Accuracy up to 0.02% for low power applications
Current Rise Times as fast as 50us
Potentiostatic/Galvanostatic Functionality enables each channel to run advanced electrochemical experiments
Dynamic Data Acquisition allows user to capture data in a differnet manner for each step based on change in time, voltage, and/or current - minimizing data file size
Plug and Play Modules for easy expansion and maintenance
Channel Paralleling allows users to parallel several of the main channels together to increase the current handling capability of the system
Multiple Current Ranges for improved accuracy over a wide range of testing conditions
High Speed Pulse allows the user to use GSM, CDMA, IDEN pulse types or custom design their own sub-second pulse profiles. Each pulse can have up to 10 stages and the pulse can be run once or repeated as in mobile phone applications.
External Charger/Load allows the user to connect his own charger or load to the system and program the SCTS to charge/discharge using his charger/load at a predetermined step in the test schedule. The system internally and automatically connects the battery to the charger/load. During the External Charge/Load step, the Arbin system collects data about the charger/load performance.
Temperature Chamber Interface allows the user to integrate the SCTS system with a temperature chamber and controller. This allows the system to set the temperature set points and ramps seperately in each step for completely automated control. No more trying to time the temperature setpoints seperately...
Auxiliary Voltage Channels can be used for numerous applications but the most common is to measure individual cell voltages within a pack. They can also be used to measure and monitor a reference or working electrode in a multi-electrode experiment.
Auxiliary Temperature Channels can be used to measure and record temperature data. They can be inserted into the pack or cell or just used to measure room temperature. Arbin offers both thermocouple and thermistor options.
Power charge/discharge cycling is a common way to compare the capacitor's cycling efficiency. Using constant current or constant power control mode, an operator can perform a current or power discharge down to the lower voltage limit followed by a constant current/power charge up to the upper voltage limit. An indicator of the capacitor's quality, such as capacitance, can be monitored at any moment during the test. For supercaps, the duration of each cycle is much shorter than for batteries, usually requiring only a few seconds to a few minutes per cycle. For this reason, SCTS provides extremely fast response and fast data acquisition, as well as, voltage clamp with <1ms response time to prevent overcharging.
Online DC-ESR Measurement
SCTS’s Equivalent Series Resistance (ESR) calculation is based upon time-domain impedance analysis using pulse methodology. The obtained DC-ESR value is averaged over 10 pulses.
The ESR measurement function can be integrated into test procedures, so that the test regimes can contain charge/discharge cycling, capacitance and leakage current measurement, and self-discharge voltage monitoring in a single test. In ESR monitoring, a key parameter, data sampling time, is adjustable to obtain accurate ESR readings for different capacitance ranges and capacitor types. Each ESR measurement takes less than 0.4s.
Injection EPR Leakage Current Measurement
Following the application of a constant voltage to a capacitor, the current drawn will attain an equilibrium value (ΔI/Δt ~ 0 ), known as injection leakage current. To guarantee the stability and accuracy of this leakage current measurement, Arbin’s SCTS employs low-noise DAC and ADC.
Self-Discharge Voltage Monitoring and Dynamic Leakage Current
The magnitude of self-discharge, or internal leakage current is an important indicator of the quality of a supercapacitor. This measurement is done in parallel with injection leakage current. The open-circuit voltage of a charged capacitor is monitored with respect to time. A dynamic leakage current can be deducted from the obtained voltage-time curve. Since the leakage current varies with the voltage, a tabular data file of voltage versus time allows users to calculate it at any voltage value. The macro-command subroutine can easily convert the data to self-discharge current ISD (or dynamic leakage current).
SCTS -
Supercapacitor Testing System
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