Compact circuit for pulse rise-time discrimination

A compact low-power circuit has been developed for rise-time selection in protable systems using thermoelectrically cooled Si-PIN photodiodes and CZT detectors. The principle of operation of the circuit is based on the comparison of the delayed detector current waveform (current signal) with the shaped preamplifier signal representing the total delivered charge (charge signal). The delay time of the detector current waveform is chosen to be shorter than the peaking time of the main shaping amplifier. If the amplitude of the current signal exceeds the amplitude of the charge signal a gate signal is generated allowing pulse acceptance from the multichannel analyzer (MCA); otherwise the pulse is rejected. The circuit comprises a small number of components mounted on a 50 × 80 mm printed circuit board. The maximum power consumption is 200 mW. Tests performed using Si-PIN photodiodes and CZT detectors indicate a significant reduction of the spectrum background. In the case of the CZT detector an improvement of the energy resolution was also observed.