A sensitive integrated CMOS charge comparator

The motivation behind this research was to design and fabricate an integrated circuit which is a position-sensitive detector for low energy (typically ⩽100 eV) charged particles. The actual device comprises a linear array of electron-sensing electrodes coupled to detection and read-out circuitry in the form of amplifiers and counters all integrated onto a single CMOS IC. The chip is intended to replace existing position-sensitive detection systems in electron spectrometers. The chip is mounted in a vacuum and needs to be capable of detecting incident charge-pulses that consist of, typically, 10⁵ to 10⁶ electrons