Characteristics of 16-Channel ASIC Preamplifier Board for Microstrip Gas Chamber and Animal PET

A 16-channel ASIC preamplifier board has been designed for microstrip gas chamber (MSGC) and animal position emission tomography (PET) detectors. The highly integrated ASIC chips can be used for individual readouts from a large number of channels to improve the spatial resolution and counting rate. The preamplifier board was tested to have a low optimum equivalent noise charge (ENC) of ~ 1400 e − FWHM at a shaping time of 0.1 μs. The output voltage to input charge gain is 0.96 V/pC, and the nonlinearity is ~ 2:0% over a range of −500 fC to 1000 fC in input charge. The rise time (10%-90%) with no input capacitor is about 54 ns. The power consumption of this preamplifier board is ~ 100 mW. The preamplifier board has been used to read out a 3 × 3 cm MSGC plate and an optimum FWHM energy resolution of 19.1% (5.9 keV peak of Fe-55) was obtained.