Design and experimental results of a preamplifier for particles tracking in secondary electron detectors

This paper presents the design and experimental characterization of a preamplifier used in the electronic front-end of low-pressure gaseous secondary electron detectors. The circuit—implemented in a printed circuit board as a proof of concept has been designed to cope with the specifications of the readout electronics used in spatial (beam particle position) measurements. Experimental results show a transimpedance gain of 80 dBΩ, an overall voltage gain of 18 dB, a peak signal-to-noise ratio of 36.5 dB and a shaping time frame of 140–170 ns. These features improve the performance of previous reported approaches to the problem, and allow us to minimize the overlapping probability in secondary electron detections for radioactive ion beams tracking, achieving a counting rate higher than 106 particles per second.