I have never heard the term Gigaohms used with resistors. Is this a valid term? With computer hard drives, if a drive is 1000 megabytes, it's called one gigabyte.
Using some resistor color code software I have, it does not use that term. For example, brown black gray says 1000M. or red red white is listed as 22,000M
In real life I have never used any resistor with that high of a capacity, I dont even know if they are made, but would 1G or 22G be valid for the examples above?
I have a number of high precision multi-Gohm resistors, for calibrating RLC meters, for when I used to repair those. They look like reed relays at first sight, enclosed in presumably evacuated glass envelopes.
** Tube and FET condenser microphones use resistors of 1 or 2 Gohms.
Example:
..... Phil
Sure, why not?
I've designed instrument front ends using resistors as large as 50G, which you can get from Digikey. (In fact they sell 500 Gohm resistors in surface mount.)
One thing to remember is that they're very very slow--a 500G resistor makes a 1-second time constant with 2 pF!
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
There may be a safety requirement to discharge across a safety barrier, without affecting normal leakage, for static discharge.
RL
Yep have used G ohm resistors and have measured currents in the 1E-12 region.
For that matter I replaced a 10 megohm 200 Watt resistor. It was a bleed resistor on a 15 kV supply,
Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
Ask the community — no account required