This paper presents the design and test of a low power analog-to-digital co
nverter (ADC) implemented in a commercial 0.25 mum CMOS technology. The cir
cuit has been developed to serve as a building block in multichannel data a
cquisition systems for high energy physics (HEP) applications. Therefore, m
edium resolution (10 bits), very low power consumption, and high modularity
are the key features of the design. In HEP experiments, the resistance of
the electronics to the ionizing radiation is often a primary issue. Hence,
the ADC has been laid out using a radiation-tolerant approach. The test res
ults show that the chip operates as a full 10-bit converter up to a clock f
requency of 30 MHz. No degradation in performance has been measured after a
total dose of 10 Mrd (SiO2).