Schematic set-up of the PPS method after Eisenmenger (W. Eisenmenger and M. Haardt Solid State Comm., Vol. 41, pp. 917-920, 1982)
A piezoelectric quartz plate (3mm thick) is driven by a 100 ns long square voltage pulse (400 V amplitude).
A 200 nm thin silicone-oil layer is used to couple the resulting pressure step into the sample.
The sample response is detected between a conducting-rubber electrode on the upper sample surface and the grounded quartz metallization and is fed into a very fast pre-amplifier (1 GHz bandwith), the output of which is connected to a Tektronix TDS 784 A digital storage oscilloscope
The propagation of the step wave through a sample leads to a compression of the sample volume which necessitates a temporary rearrangement of the induction charges on the electrodes which manifests itself as a current between the electrodes.