Design and fabrication of high temperature resistivity measurement setup

A high temperature resistivity measurement set-up has been designed consisting of a furnace and a four probe to measure the resistivity of prepared sample. The handmade furnace can withstand temperature up to 6000C. The system also consists of an automatic temperature controller which uses the principle of an „on-off‟ furnace controller. A K-type thermocouple is used to measure and control the furnace temperature and a Pt-100 sensor is used for sample temperature measurement. This Pt-100 sensor is connected with digital multimeter which gives its corresponding resistances for temperature conversion. The setup is connected with Kethley nanovolmeter and current source, which are interfaced with a computer using Lab-view software. This arrangement reduces the manual effort. In this experimental set up, both bulk and thin film samples can be investigated. We have prepared a ceramics oxide (La2/3Sr1/3MnO3) by sol-gel auto combustion method and the formation of the compound has been checked using X-ray diffraction analysis. The crystal structure was found to be orthorhombic with lattice parameter a= 3.8550 A0, b= 3.8367A0 and c= 3.8794A0. The temperature dependent resistivity of La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 is presented as a test material to demonstrate the possibility and accuracy of the experimental set-up. The temperature dependent electrical resistivity follows Arrhenius behaviour