A single photon resolution integrating chip for microstrip detectors

A charge integrating readout chip for silicon strip sensors is currently under development at Paul Sherrer Institut. The goal of the project is to provide a readout system that can sustain, through charge integration and automatic gain switching, the instantaneous many-photon deposition typical of the forthcoming XFEL machines. Nevertheless, a charge integrating readout with single photon sensitivity presents several features that can be exploited in many Synchrotron source applications: the possibility of a higher position resolution, the high photon rate capabilities and the possibility to detect low energy photon. A prototype of the readout chip (ROC) has been integrated with a strip detector and with a dedicated DAQ electronic, and it has been tested at the SYRMEP beam line (ELETTRA, Trieste). This work presents the readout chip and shows the results of the beam line tests in terms of spatial resolution and rate capabilities.