4 channel, 20 ps resolution, monolithic time-to-amplitude converter for multichannel TCSPC systems

Matteo Crotti; Ivan Rech; Ivan Labanca; Massimo Ghioni

doi:10.1117/12.919020

19 May 2012 4 channel, 20 ps resolution, monolithic time-to-amplitude converter for multichannel TCSPC systems

Matteo Crotti, Ivan Rech, Ivan Labanca, Massimo Ghioni

Proceedings Volume 8375, Advanced Photon Counting Techniques VI; 83750I (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.919020
Event: SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing, 2012, Baltimore, Maryland, United States

Abstract

Over the past years an always growing interest has arisen about the measurement technique of time-correlated single photon counting (TCSPC) and many applications exploiting TCSPC have been developing in several fields, such as medicine and chemistry. The use of multianode PMTs and of single photon avalanche diode arrays led to the development of acquisition systems with several parallel channels, to employ the TCSPC technique in even more applications. Since TCSPC basically consists in the photons arrival time measurement, the most important part of an acquisition chain is the time measurement block, which must have high resolution and low differential nonlinearity and, in order to implement multidimensional systems, it has to be integrated to reduce both cost and area. To accomplish all these specifications, we have designed and fabricated a 4 channel fully integrated time-to-amplitude converter (TAC), built in 0.35 μm Si-Ge technology, characterized by a variable full scale range from 11 ns to 89 ns, very good time resolution (better than 20 ps FWHM), low differential nonlinearity (better than 0.04 LSB peak-peak and less than 0.2% LSB rms), high counting rate (16 MHz), low and constant power dissipation (50 mW) and low area occupation (340 × 390 μm² per channel). Our measurements also show a very little crosstalk between converters integrated on the same chip; this feature together with low power and low area make the fabricated converter suitable for parallelization, so that it can be the starting point for future acquisition chains with a high number of parallel channels.

Citation Download Citation

Matteo Crotti, Ivan Rech, Ivan Labanca, and Massimo Ghioni "4 channel, 20 ps resolution, monolithic time-to-amplitude converter for multichannel TCSPC systems", Proc. SPIE 8375, Advanced Photon Counting Techniques VI, 83750I (19 May 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.919020

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KEYWORDS

Logic

Amplifiers

Picosecond phenomena

Time metrology

Analog electronics

Capacitors

Single photon

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