Development of a Multichannel Low-Noise Front-end Readout ASIC for a Silicon Strip Detector in X-ray Diffractometers

A silicon strip detector is a good candidate to detect X-rays whose energy range is 4 to 30 keV with a high-count rate in X-ray diffractometers (XRD) applications. Low-noise and fast readout electronics are required to measure the photon count and the energy resolution. This paper describes the development of a multichannel low-noise front-end readout application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) for X-ray diffraction applications using silicon strip detectors. The development of such ASIC is divided into two steps. In the first step, a four-channel ASIC prototype is designed to verify the circuit topologies and the fabricated process. Then, a multichannel front-end ASIC is designed in the second step. The ASIC was fabricated in a commercial 350-nm CMOS mixed-signal process with a matric of 4.4 mm × 4.9 mm. Simulation results indicate that the best noise performance of the readout ASIC is 25 e ^- (rms) plus 4.4 e ^- /pF. The count rate is up to 0.83 Mcps under the power dissipation of about 5 mW/channel.