| Various electronic amplifier systems have been developed during the past years for solid state detectors for energetic charged particle detection. Most of them were based on the design of discrete parts or high performance hybrid packaged chips. With rapid development of modern integrated circuit industry, there are more and more integrated systems built for such applications.;This work describes a novel multi-channel integrated readout circuit (MIROC) mixed-signal ASIC for solid stage charged particle detectors. The chip contains nineteen analog amplifier channels including the test channel, three on-chip 8-bit ADCs, each equipped with a 8-bit parallel-to-serial shift register, three 19-input analog multiplexers, and other digital control logic modules. This was the first known integrated readout system with multiple channels and multiple ADCs, by the time the project started. The chip is designed with special interest in 1MeV electrons. It is a highly integrated system that only requires minimal external controls, which could significantly reduce cost, space, power and total mass of the readout system, and reduce the development cycle of new instruments.;MIROC chip was fabricated with IBM 7WL 0.18microm SiGe BiCMOS technology through MOSIS MEP research license, and has been tested, with key components characterized. Measured only 4mmx4mm, this highly integrated readout system has a FWHM noise below 20keV. The four configurable conversion gain levels of the amplifier chains, measured to be 164mV/MeV, 378mV/MeV, 611mV/MeV and 950mV/MeV, make the chip capable of studying energetic charged particles over the range of 100keV up to 6MeV. |
