Development of a fast 12-bit ADC for a nuclear spectroscopy system

A fast 12-bit ADC using the sliding scale technique has been developed for nuclear spectroscopy applications. The new approach takes advantage of the latest high-speed 12-bit flash ADC of AD 9042 from Analog-Devices and Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). The fast 12-bit ADC features a short conversion time of 1 μs and low differential nonlinearity of 1%. This performance of the fast 12-bit ADC is achieved with low circuit complexity. Experimental results using a HPGe detector and fast 12-bit ADC are also discussed.