A Solid-State Charge Detector With Gain Calibration Using Photocurrent
| Autor: | Aaron R. Hawkins, Whitney Kinnison, Elaura Gustafson, Yixin Song, Daniel E. Austin, Jace Rozsa, Benjamin Karlinsey, Joan Barros de Magalhaes, Shiuh-hua Wood Chiang, Shea Smith |
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| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Physics
business.industry Dynamic range Amplifier 020208 electrical & electronic engineering Detector 02 engineering and technology Capacitance Noise (electronics) law.invention Capacitor CMOS law 0202 electrical engineering electronic engineering information engineering Optoelectronics Sensitivity (control systems) Electrical and Electronic Engineering business Instrumentation |
| Zdroj: | IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement. 69:9398-9407 |
| ISSN: | 1557-9662 0018-9456 |
| Popis: | We describe a charge detector that utilizes a high-gain, differential solid-state amplifier with active reset and a novel technique to measure the gain using a custom optoelectronic system. Implemented in a 180-nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process, the amplifier realizes a high gain of $8.9~\mu \text{V}/\text{e}-$ and single-pass rms noise of 475e− for 10-ms time interval with a 300-kHz low-pass filter corner. Operating at a sampling frequency of 10 kHz, the active reset extends the dynamic range of the detector. The amplifier is the first instance of a charge detector that combines a differential topology, active reset, and small feedback capacitors for low-noise, high-gain, high-dynamic-range, and robust operations. The proposed optoelectronic test system injects an adjustable input photocurrent as low as 33 pA to precisely quantify the detector’s gain without the need for a known calibration capacitance. The amplifier is directly wire-bonded to a PCB that has a built-in 1-cm2 Faraday cup. The gain and noise performance have been characterized for a range of input capacitance, and the results show good agreement with simulations. The test system additionally demonstrates the ability to inject a time-varying input at the picoamphere levels to characterize the dynamic response of the detector. An electrospray system confirms that the detector responds to free-space charge and that it can process an input as large as 56 000e− without saturation. The compact and high sensitivity design qualify the device for use in charge detection applications, such as mass spectrometry and space instruments. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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