Monolithic systems design for the Silicon Electromagnetic Calorimetry Collaboration

A series of monolithic bipolar charge-sensitive preamplifiers and a companion monolithic 50-ns CMOS shaping amplifier have been designed, fabricated, and characterized for use with silicon calorimeters. The preamplifier topologies evaluated were current-mode, folded cascode, and differential. These three topologies were fabricated in the Harris Semiconductor VHF process and were characterized for noise, transient response, power dissipation and radiation hardness. Versions of each preamplifier have been designed to operate over a range of detector pad capacitance from 20-500 pF. The CMOS shaping amplifier specifications and test results are presented with emphasis on the system integration requirements for beam tests.< >