www.chalmers.se/ilab

I-lab is an Internet-based remote laboratory for characterization of semiconductor diodes, at the department of Microelectronics, Chalmers Univeristy of Technology.

By performing measurements over the Internet instead of working in the laboratory hall, many new applications are created. The student can now perform measurements 24 hours a day from home or any computer connected to the Internet. Universities can use each other's laboratory setups and exchange experiences with each other. Companies can connect an instrument setup to the Internet and students can perform advanced measurements at them.

We have noticed that this will motivate students to undertake more advanced data analysis, since less time needs be spent on practical details. This is a cost effective way of letting the student use an expensive instrument setup.

The I-lab system consists of high-performance measurement instruments for electrical dc and low-frequency ac characterization of two-terminal devices. We have chosen to use these rather expensive measurement instruments for allowing accurate and straightforward characterization of semiconductor devices. Our experience from doing research on semiconductor physics and devices, where we use such instrumentation everyday, is that these instruments are easy to use and offer high reliability and high accuracy.

In I-Lab, the instruments and the set of devices to be characterized are all connected to a switch unit. The switch makes it possible through computer control to choose which instrument is to be physically connected to any one of the devices connected to the switch. By using this approach it is straightforward to perform both dc and ac characterization of several different devices without having to manually switch between instruments and devices. This is an essential property of a remote laboratory.

Technically, I-lab is based on a client-server Apache and Python. The client communicates with the server over the Internet. The server communicates with the measurement equipment over the instrument GPIB-bus. The server also controls a switch, which makes it possible to select the instruments to use and the device-under-test.

The figure below shows the measurement setup.

Using I-lab is free for individual use. Should you wish to use any of the labs in the context of a course, please contact us.