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REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS VOLUME 69, NUMBER 9 SEPTEMBER 1998 A high-accuracy, calibration-free technique for measuring the electrical conductivity of liquids Susan L. Schiefelbein,a) Naomi A. Fried,b) Kevin G. Rhoads, and Donald R. Sadowayc) Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139-4307 Received 8 May 1998; accepted for publication 1 July 1998 A high-accuracy, calibration-free technique to measure the electrical conductivity of liquids has been developed — the coaxial cylinders technique. Because the liquid under investigation comes in contact only with metal and not with anything dielectric, this technique enables the measurement of the electrical properties of liquids inaccessible by classical high-accuracy techniques. Two coaxial cylindrical electrodes are immersed in the liquid to an arbitrary initial depth, and ac impedance is measured over a wide range of frequency. This process is repeated at many immersions. The electrical conductivity is calculated from the change in measured conductance with immersion. This technique was validated in 1.0, 0.1, and 0.01 D KClaq solutions at room temperature. Measured electrical conductivities were within 0.5% of the standard reference values. © 1998 American Institute of Physics. S0034-67489804909-0 I. INTRODUCTION where R is resistance, is electrical resistivity, is the elec- trical conductivity, l is the effective length of the current In applications ranging from batteries to electrolysis