A Double-Gain, Large Dynamic Range Front-end ASIC With A/D Conversion for Silicon Detectors Read-Out

We present a prototype of an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) featuring an input dynamic range of more than 52 pC. The ASIC is designed to read out signals from large-capacitance silicon detectors used in Si-W calorimeters for high-energy astroparticle physics experiments. The ASIC features a double-gain Charge Sensitive Amplifier (CSA), which uses a real-time automatic gain selection circuitry to switch between the input ranges of [0-2.4 pC] and [0-52.6 pC]. A Correlated Double Sampling (CDS) filter follows the CSA and completes the front-end chain. A complete analog channel dissipates 2.8 mW. The present prototype also includes 9 cyclic ADC channels, in view of the final objective of this project, which will be a 16-channel chip with digitized outputs.