Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange
Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [leakage-current]

Leakage is the current across a boundary normally viewed as insulating, such as the spontaneous discharge of a charged capacitor, or the flow of current across a transistor in the "off" state or a reverse-polarized diode. Leakage current can also refer to the unwanted current that flows from a circuit in equipment to the chassis, or to ground. If equipment is not properly grounded, this current flows through other paths, such as the human body.

180 questions
28
votes
3 answers

The mysterious case of the random leakage current

Disclaimer: I already know the solution of this circuit debugging conundrum (and it is not trivial), and I'll post it after some time, so that other people could give their contribution to this mystery story! I think it may have some educational…
LorenzoDonati4Ukraine-OnStrike
  • 24,350
  • 5
  • 62
  • 107
14
votes
2 answers

What is the "CV" unit for leakage current in a capacitor datasheet?

I've looked at a few leakage current specifications for electrolytic capacitors, and they all seem to specify the value as something like this: I < 0.01 CV or 3 (μA) after 2 minutes, whichever is greater Here are a few example datasheets:…
Polynomial
  • 10,562
  • 5
  • 47
  • 88
11
votes
3 answers

How much mains leakage does an Ethernet connection to a PC induce, and what is the operating leakage path?

It seems that some users on another Stack have reported GFCI nuisance trips caused by mains leakage through twisted-pair Ethernet cables connected between computers on different branch circuits, or more specifically, between a computer with a Class…
ThreePhaseEel
  • 8,858
  • 4
  • 26
  • 41
10
votes
2 answers

How are such low op-amp input currents possible?

I understand that op-amps have low input currents; that's one of their defining characteristics. But looking at the datasheet for the LMC6001 (amusingly called an "Ultra, Ultra-Low Input Current Amplifier" because one ultra just wasn't enough), I…
Hearth
  • 27,177
  • 3
  • 51
  • 115
9
votes
7 answers

Low Drain-Source MOSFET Leakage

I've been looking at the SM74611 Smart Bypass Diode from Texas Instruments and am very impressed with the reported reverse leakage current (0.3uA at 25C). Considering the device has a N-Channel FET, 0.3uA of Drain-Source leakage current @ 25C is…
TRISAbits
  • 1,348
  • 1
  • 13
  • 25
8
votes
1 answer

Leakage current to heat sink

I am working to lower the leakage current in an isolated power supply. The power supply uses an isolation transformer to step down from 120V/240V to 6.5V. The voltage is then rectified and run through five TO-220 LM2941 regulators to generate…
Engineman
  • 81
  • 2
6
votes
3 answers

Opamp Guard Polygon: Only in Top PCB layer or or all layers

I have an opamp circuit as shown below. My board stack up is SIGNAL-GND-POWER-SIGNAL. I am providing a polygon to Guard the trace which is going to non-inverting the input of the opamp. The guard trace is connected to SMA connector also. At present…
Hari
  • 1,496
  • 11
  • 22
6
votes
1 answer

Diode forward current with µV..mV forward bias

When running LTSpice simulations on forward biased diodes I get plots like the following: This example is for a BAS116 and a 1N4001 - the current in the sub mV region is about 5 orders of magnitude different. I am wondering if there is a reason…
tobalt
  • 18,646
  • 16
  • 73
6
votes
2 answers

What is the purpose of this bias resistor?

I am unsure what the following statement on page 4 of this application note (Over Voltage Protection Circuit for Automotive Load Dump) means. Resistor R4 provides a small amount of bias to Q2 in order to satisfy Q2 ’s drain leakage in the off…
efox29
  • 11,827
  • 9
  • 56
  • 102
6
votes
2 answers

What (if any) is the leakage current through a NPN (C-E)?

So I have a circuit where I need the current consumption to be low. Therefore I am using a 10M\$\Omega\$ resistor to 'pull-up' the pin on a chip which will need to be switched between high and ground (by high I mean the supply voltage which is…
MrPhooky
  • 2,168
  • 8
  • 24
  • 55
5
votes
4 answers

Dependency of leakage on the gate oxide thickness

This is a follow-up question to this one. I would like to investigate the effect of the gate oxide thickness Tox on the leakage current. To this end, I ran a set of SPICE simulations and plotted the obtained data: Now, I am trying to find an…
Ivan
  • 209
  • 3
  • 8
5
votes
2 answers

Voltage drop due to leakage current in capacitors in series

When capacitors are connected in series in a DC circuit, the voltage drop across individual capacitors at and immediately after the initial charging period is inversely proportional to the individual capacitance of each capacitor. But afterwards,…
Duke William
  • 206
  • 8
5
votes
1 answer

Protecting a coin cell from high current spikes - using a capacitor or not?

I've built some prototypes and try to gather some data from them. Skip below the two horizontal lines to read more about it. Original Question Brief summary I would like to know whether it is beneficial to add a capacitor in parallel to a CR2032…
Lightly Toasted Bun
  • 51
  • 3
5
votes
1 answer

Switching regulator enable pin low, but output isn't fully off. Why?

I'm working on a battery-powered application using two Texas Instruments switching regulators and a Linear Technology pushbutton power controller: I have confirmed that when I push the button and turn the regulators on, they work as expected, and I…
Chris Fernandez
  • 1,316
  • 14
  • 32
5
votes
1 answer

on-chip low-pass filter with sub-Hertz cutoff frequency

Sometime ago I had to implement an on-chip (CMOS 65nm) low-pass filter (first order) with very low cutoff frequency (lower than 100mHz). I used PMOS pseudo resistors and momcap, and had to check all the corners to make sure the cutoff freq is low…
Ali
  • 220
  • 1
  • 8
1
2 3
…
11 12