A miniaturized reliability test system for microdevices with controlled environmental parameters is presented. The system is capable of measuring key electrical parameters of the microdevices while controlling the environmental conditions around the microdevices. The test system is compact and thus can be integrated with standard test equipment for microdevices. By using a feed-forward decoupling algorithm, the presented test system is capable of generating a temperature range of 0–120 °C and a humidity range of 20–90% RH (0–55 °C), within a small footprint and weight. The accuracy for temperature and humidity control is ±0.1 °C and ±1% RH (30 °C), respectively. The functionality of the proposed test system is verified by integrating it with a piezo shaker to test the environmental reliability of an electromagnetic vibration energy harvester. The proposed system can be used as a proof-of-technology platform for characterizing the performance of microdevices with controlled environmental parameters.

In this paper, a capacitive readout system with automatic parasitic capacitance cancellation function is designed and implemented. The readout system is implemented with discrete component on a board level. The parasitic cancellation is realized by matching a digital programmable capacitor to the parasitic capacitance using a PI controller. The function of the readout system is verified by using standard ceramic capacitors and a MEMS micromirror device. Capacitance measurements up to 35 pF for ceramic capacitors are performed, the maximum error between the measurement results of the circuit and an LCR meter is 0.07 pF. For MEMS micromirror, the circuit cancels the parasitic capacitance of 32.63 pF and realizes a measurement error within 0.06 pF. The proposed system can be used as a proof-of-concept platform demonstrating the feasibility of the generic parasitic cancellation method for MEMS sensors and actuators.

In this work, a carrier-free photoacoustic spectroscopy system is developed for the detection of trace acetylene gas in insulating oil. The photoacoustic cell was integrated with an oil–gas separator, allowing dissolved gases in oil to be introduced into the cell through free diffusion. The oil–gas separator is a custom-fabricated AF2400-coated ceramic membrane, and its spin-coating process was carefully designed to enable rapid oil–gas separation and achieve high film flatness. Using a resonant photoacoustic cell and a low-noise lock-in amplifier, the sensitivity of the system was improved to 6.90 mV/ppm, with a repeatability error less than 1.65%. Calibration experiments demonstrated that continuous detection of dissolved gas in oil could be achieved, with a response time T₉₀ of less than 72.5 min. Compared to traditional photoacoustic spectroscopy, the continuous measurement capability of this method is expected to enable earlier fault diagnosis, thus having greater potential in industrial fields.