Multi-Channel Integrated Circuits For Use In Research With Radioactive Ion Beams

The Integrated Circuits Design Research Laboratory at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) has been collaborating over the past several years with the Nuclear Reactions Group at Washington University (WU) on the development of a family of custom, multi‐channel Integrated Circuits (ICs). To date, the collaboration has successfully produced two micro‐chips. The first was an analog shaped and peak sensing chip known as HINP16C (Heavy Ion Nuclear Physics—16 Channel). The second chip, christened PSD8C (Pulse Shape Discrimination—8 Channel), was designed to logically complement (in terms of detector types) the HINP16C chip. The HINP16C chip, for use with solid‐state detectors, produces sparsified analog pulse trains for both linear (pulse height) and timing (relative to an external reference) signals. A shaper and peak detector are implemented in the linear branch, and a pseudo Constant‐Fraction Discriminator (CFD) and Time‐to‐Voltage Converter (TVC) are implemented in the logic/timing branch. The i...