The Development of Ultrasensitive Leak Detection Technology

The present situation and development of ultrasensitive leak detection technology in the world is introduced in this paper. The leak detection with leakage rate less than 10⁻¹² Pa·m³/s is called ultrasensitive leak detection, which is an important development to solve the leak detection requirement of long life and high reliability vacuum devices. Due to the limitation of the lower limit of mass spectrum analysis and micro current measurement of general commercial leak detector, the lower limit of actual leakage measurement is 10⁻¹¹ Pa·m³/s, and the lower limit of leak detection can reach 10⁻¹² Pa·m³/s after software correction. In order to achieve ultrasensitive leak detection, the international research on relevant technologies began in the 1960s, mainly focusing on the extension of the lower limit of leak detection and the improvement of leak detection accuracy. China has broken through many technologies in ultrasensitive leak detection. The lower limit of leak detection has reached 5×10⁻¹⁶ Pa·m³/s, and the combined standard uncertainty of leak detection results has been reduced to less than 15%.