Development of Large Area, Pico-second resolution Photo-Detectors and associated readout electronics

The Large Area Pico-second Photo-Detectors presented in this contribution integrate a photocathode, glass capillary micro-channel plates (MCP) activated by atomic layer deposition (ALD) of independent layers of secondary electron emitter and resistive materials, and collecting anodes. Applications range from medical imaging (positron emission tomography) to tracking and calorimetry for high energy physics experiments. These devices are read out from both ends of a set of GHz-bandwidth transmission lines. This allows daisy-chaining of multiple devices to achieve large area detectors with time resolutions on the order of 10-100 pico-seconds and position resolutions of less than one millimeter in each of two spatial dimensions. First tests with pairs of small glass capillary have demonstrated gains of 10⁵ to 10⁷. A new 6-channel ASIC has been designed in 130 nm CMOS technology to sample and digitize detector data. This ASIC can sample at 15 GS/s with an intrinsic analog bandwidth above 1.5 GHz, and digitizes 1280 cells in parallelin two micro-seconds with 12-bit resolution. Digital signal processing of sampled waveforms from MCP devices is expected to achieve timing and position resolutions comparable to those obtained with digital oscilloscopes.