ASIC for High Rate 3D Position Sensitive Detectors

Abstract

We report on the development of an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for 3D position sensitive detectors (3D PSD). The ASIC is designed to operate with pixelated wide bandgap sensors like Cadmium-Zinc-Telluride (CZT), Mercuric Iodide (Hgl2) and Thallium Bromide (TIBr). It measures the amplitudes and timings associated with an ionizing event on 128 anodes, the anode grid, and the cathode. Each channel provides low-noise charge amplification, high-order shaping with peaking time adjustable from 250 ns to 12 μs, gain adjustable to 20 mV/fC or 120 mV/fC (for a dynamic range of 3.2 MeV and 530 keV in CZT), amplitude discrimination with 5-bit trimming, and positive and negative peak and timing detections. The readout can be full or sparse, based on a flag and single- or multi-cycle token passing. All channels, triggered channels only, or triggered with neighbors can be read out thus increasing the rate capability of the system to more than 10 kcps. The ASIC dissipates 330 mW which corresponds to about 2.5 mW per channel.