MICA - A MULTICHANNEL INTEGRATED CHARGE AMPLIFIER FOR THE READ-OUT OFMULTIELECTRODE DETECTORS

A 16 channel, fully parallel, CMOS integrated circuit including a prea mplifier, a shaper and a discriminator, has been designed and succesfu lly tested in the laboratory and on the detector. It combines fast sha ping (28 ns peaking time) with good noise performance (600 + 18/pF ele ctrons ENC). The shaper can be tailored for both delta and tail curren ts with positive or negative polarity. The discriminator has an ECL co mpatible output with a threshold sensitivity of +/- 5000 electrons. It seems well suited for the read-out of 1-D and 2-D microstrip gas cham bers as well as for silicon microstrip detectors or other multielectro de detectors with parallel digital read-out and moderate sampling pitc h.