Mixed signal custom integrated circuit development for physics instrumentation

Abstract

The Monolithic Systems Development Group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been greatly involved in custom mixed-mode integrated circuit development for the PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory and position-sensitive germanium spectrometer front-ends for the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). This paper will outline the work done for both PHENIX and the Naval Research Laboratory in the area of full-custom, mixed-signal CMOS integrated electronics. This paper presents the architectures chosen for the various PHENIX detectors which include position-sensitive silicon, capacitive pixel, and phototube detectors, and performance results for the subsystems as well as a system description of the NRL germanium strip system and its performance. The performance of the custom preamplifiers, discriminators, analog memories, analog-digital converters, and control circuitry for all systems will be presented