A NOVEL CHARGE AMPLIFYING TECHNIQUE

A low-power, BiCMOS front-end amplifier for capacitive detector read-o ut is discussed. The QDCAL Amplifier is a combination of a Dynamically Controlled Active Load (DCAL) and a Charge (Q) Amplifier. The QDCAL h as a gain of 25 mV/fC, a power consumption P-1 of approximate to 1.15 mW (bias circuit not included), an output (0-100%) peaking time t((0-1 00%)) of approximate to 8 ns at a detector capacitance C-det = 21 pF, and a mid-band input referred series noise spectral density [e(n)] and parallel noise spectral density [i(n)] of approximate to 1.22 nV/root Hz and approximate to 1.26 pA/root Hz, respectively. The circuit was developed in the radiation hard SOI BiCMOS-PJFET technology of DMILL. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.