Trimming the threshold dispersion below 10 e-rms in a large area readout IC working in a single photon counting mode

Abstract

We present a new method of an in-pixel threshold dispersion correction implemented in a prototype readout integrated circuit (IC) operating in a single photon counting mode. The new threshold correction method was implemented in a readout IC of area 9.6× 14.9 mm2 containing 23552 square pixels with the pitch of 75 μm designed and fabricated in CMOS 130 nm technology. Each pixel of the IC consists of a charge sensitive amplifier, a shaper, two discriminators, two 14-bit counters and a low-area trim DACs for threshold correction. The user can either control the range of the trim DAC globally for all the pixels in the integrated circuit or modify the trim DACs characteristics locally in each pixel independently. Using a simulation tool based on the Monte-Carlo methods, we estimated how much we could improve the offset trimming by increasing the number of bits in the trim DACs or implementing additional bits in a pixel to modify the characteristics of the trim DACs. The measurements of our IC prototype show that it is possible to reduce the effective threshold dispersion in large-area single-photon counting chips below 10 electrons rms.