High frame rate measurements of semiconductor pixel detector readout IC

We report on high count rate and high frame rate measurements of a prototype IC named FPDR90, designed for readouts of hybrid pixel semiconductor detectors used for X-ray imaging applications. The FPDR90 is constructed in 90 nm CMOS technology and has dimensions of 4 mm×4 mm. Its main part is a matrix of 40×32 pixels with 100 μm×100 μm pixel size. The chip works in the single photon counting mode with two discriminators and two 16-bit ripple counters per pixel. The count rate per pixel depends on the effective CSA feedback resistance and can be set up to 6 Mcps. The FPDR90 can operate in the continuous readout mode, with zero dead time. Due to the architecture of digital blocks in pixel, one can select the number of bits read out from each counter from 1 to 16. Because in the FPDR90 prototype only one data output is available, the frame rate is 9 kfps and 72 kfps for 16 bits and 1 bit readout, respectively (with nominal clock frequency of 200 MHz).