Charge Amplifiers? Electric Field Mill

[2.718281828459]

I am currently working on building an electric field mill. I am in the very early stages of building this and I have little experience on the subject, unfortunately. I understand the basics and came up with a formula to calculate the current with respect to time (this is AC current). Unfortunately, the magnitude of my current output will be at most on the order of a nanoamp. This is too small as the ammeter I have is much less sensitive. As I have read in a few papers, a charge amplifier is necessary. I don't know anything about them and have dozens of questions that I can't find answers to. Perhaps even a few key words would help me in the construction of this, but right now I am stuck. What I really want is a simple way to increase the current of my mill by a constant so that I can still use my setup to find the magnitude of electric fields with it. That's the dream at least. Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

 

[Bobbywhy]

Here is a paper that describe the salient features of a charge amplifier in great detail.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JTECH2039.1

Here is a section from MacGorman, D. R., and W. D. Rust, 1998: The Electrical Nature of Thunderstorms. Oxford University Press,
http://books.google.com/books?id=_N...onepage&q=field mill charge amplifier&f=false

Here is a website from a Field Mill DIY project. It includes the schematic with all the parts labeled with part numbers. Notice that the first amplifier he uses is the AD 795.
http://www.precisionstrobe.com/jc/fieldmill/fieldmill.html

(edit: add two more websites of interest)

Here is a link to a textbook. The chapters shown cover Electrostatic Fields,
Field Mills, Calibration Fields, ELF and ULF Electric Fields, Natural Horizontal Electric Field at the Earth’s Surface, Free-Body Electric Field Meters, Radio-Frequency and Microwave Techniques, Dipole Antennas, Aperture Antennas,
Three-Loop Antenna System, Broadband Dipole Antennas
http://dsp-book.narod.ru/MISH/CH47.PDF

Here is a website about Electric Field Mills with lots of external links for constructing them: http://a-tech.net/ElectricFieldMill/