A CHARGE PREAMPLIFIER WITH A LARGE DYNAMIC-RANGE FOR THE DETECTION OFULTRA HEAVY NUCLIDES IN-SPACE EXPERIMENTS

A charge preamplifier with a large dynamic range and related readout s ystem has been designed, constructed and tested. It is dedicated to th e readout of silicon multistrip detectors for cosmic ray experiments i n space. The charge dynamic range extends from fractions of minimum io nizing particles (MIPs) up to 16000 MIPs covering all nuclides of the periodic chart of elements in the relativistic regime. The power consu mption per channel is 48 mW and may be reduced to 26 mW by limiting th e charge dynamic to 1-8000 MIPs. The noise, at room temperature, amoun ts to 1185 ENC electrons with a detector capacitance of 470 pF. The me asured integral non-linearity in the full range 1-16000 MIPs is less t han 0.5%. Performance results with electrons from Sr-90, with alpha pa rticles from Am-241 and with cosmic ray ground muons are presented.