학술논문

ALTAIR: A Low-Noise, Low-Power, High-Speed and Wide Dynamic Range ASIC for X- and γ-Ray Spectroscopy With CdTe/CdZnTe Pixel Detectors
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on. 68(2):182-188 Feb, 2021
Subject
Nuclear Engineering
Bioengineering
II-VI semiconductor materials
Cadmium compounds
Detectors
Registers
Power demand
Capacitance
Preamplifiers
Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)
CdTe/CdZnTe
CMOS
gamma-Ray
low-noise
low-power
nuclear electronics
X-Ray
Language
ISSN
0018-9499
1558-1578
Abstract
ALTAIR is an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) developed for the readout of CdTe/CdZnTe detectors for X– $\gamma $ -ray spectroscopic imaging. ALTAIR is composed of 16 channels with analog and mixed-signal sections specifically designed for high energy resolution and high-rate applications with the constraints of a low power consumption and operation at room temperature. The ASIC has three selectable ranges for input charge signals covering photon energies up to 90, 160, or 300 keV, which allow to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio under different experimental conditions. Eight peaking times of the pulse shaper are selectable from 200 up to $2.3~\mu \text{s}$ . ALTAIR includes a 180 bits register and an integrated serial peripheral interface (SPI) interface to configure the signal-processing parameters globally or independently for each channel. The power consumption is $950~\mu \text{W}$ /channel or 1.35 mW/channel for single-ended or differential output versions, respectively. A minimum equivalent noise charge (ENC) of 37 electrons rms [386 eV full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) in CdTe] has been measured at 500 ns peaking time and 90-keV energy range. With a CdTe pixel detector connected to ALTAIR and operated at +24 °C, a pulser FWHM of 1.7 keV (160 el. rms) and 1.9-keV FWHM on 59.54 keV line of 241 Am have been achieved at a peaking time of 500 ns.