Readout ASICs for silicon drift detectors

Abstract

Semiconductor drift detectors (SDDs) are widely used in X-ray spectroscopy due to their excellent performances in terms of energy resolution and detection-rate. Suitable low noise readout electronics have to be designed in order to exploit the SDD intrinsic performances. The integration of this electronics in custom application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) is mandatory when the compactness of the detection system (detector and electronics) and the need to read out multi-elements SDDs are primary requirements. This work describes the development of three circuits for SDDs, which are a charge sensitive preamplifier operating in the pulsed reset regime, a fast shaping amplifier for high-count rates applications and a multi-channel ASIC that provides the whole analog processing and multiplexing of the signals from SDD arrays. The ASICs have been tested with SDDs with on-chip JFET and the results are presented here.