Very low-power consumption analog pulse processing ASIC for semiconductor radiation detectors

We describe a very-low power consumption circuit for processing the pulses from a semiconductor radiation detector. The circuit was designed for use with a cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detector for unattended monitoring of stored nuclear materials. The device is intended to be battery powered and operate at low duty-cycles over a long period of time. This system will provide adequate performance for medium resolution gamma-ray pulse-height spectroscopy applications. The circuit incorporates the functions of a charge sensitive preamplifier, shaping amplifier, and peak sample and hold circuit. An application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) version of the design has been designed, built and tested. With the exception of the input field effect transistor, the circuit is constructed using bipolar components. In this paper the design philosophy and measured performance characteristics of the circuit are described