Abstract
We report on the development of custom front-end electronics for use with avalanche photodiode (APD) arrays as part of a NASA technology study for the readout of scintillating plastic fibers. APD arrays featuring 64 1 mm square pixels are used. We demonstrate that a pixel of these APD arrays coupled to relatively thin (0.25 mm) and short (15 cm) scintillating plastic fibers can be used to detect and measure the tracks of even minimum ionizing particles. An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) implementation of the electronics is required to produce a detector sufficiently compact for practical use in a space flight experiment featuring many thousands of channels. This paper briefly describes the detector concept and performance and presents the design and performance of a four-channel prototype ASIC fabricated using the 0.35 μ Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) process.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 928-935 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science |
Volume | 50 |
Issue number | 4 II |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 2003 |
Funding
Manuscript received May 12, 2003; revised July 9, 2003. This work was supported by NASA’s Explorer Technology Development Program under the University of New Hampshire Grant NAG5-8641.
Keywords
- Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)
- Avalanche photodiode (APD)
- Complimentary metal-oxide-semiconductor
- Low power
- Scintillating fiber