ICON, A CURRENT-MODE PREAMPLIFIER IN CMOS TECHNOLOGY FOR USE WITH HIGH-RATE PARTICLE DETECTORS

The ICON current mode preamplifier is intended for use in experiments at high rate hadron colliders. The transient response and noise performance have been analyzed. One chip has been made using an ICON circuit with resistive feedback to produce a preamplifier with a peaking time of below 10 ns. This fast preamplifier has a gain of 870 mV / pC and a power dissipation of around 1 mW. Another chip was made which uses the ICON circuit as the front-end to a dual port analog memory. The noise measured is between 2400 e- and 3000 e-. An important characteristic of ICON is that it can tolerate a detector leakage current of 10 muA at the DC coupled input. Therefore, it is very suitable for silicon detector systems under severe radiation conditions.