Experimental techniques in physics, material science, biology and medicine want to gain profit from the advantages of the VLSI technology by using a new generation of electronic measurement systems based on parallel signal processing from the multielement sensors. In most cases key problems for building such system are multichannel mixed-mode Application Specific Integrated Circuits, which are capable to process small amplitude signals from multielement sensor. In this class of integrated circuits several important problems like power limitation, low level of noise, good matching performance and crosstalk effects must be solved simultaneously. This presentation shows two ASICs which, given the original solutions implemented and their universal properties, can be used in different applications and are significant milestones in experimental techniques. The first presented ASIC is the 64-channel charge amplifier with binary readout architecture for a low energy X-ray imaging techniques. This integrated circuit connected to silicon strip detector can be used in powder diffractometry and then it reduces the measurement time by two order of magnitude. The second presented ASIC is multichannel low noise readout for extracellular neural recording, which is able to cope with extracellular neuronal recording for the systems comprising several hundreds of electrodes. Important steps forward in this design are a novel solution for band-pass filters for low frequency range, which follow requirements for good matching, low power and small silicon area. This ASIC can be used to monitor the neural activity of such complicated system like retina or brain.

Date Published: 12 October 2005
PDF: 13 pages
Proc. SPIE 5948, Photonics Applications in Industry and Research IV, 59480T (12 October 2005); doi: 10.1117/12.622761

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5948:
Photonics Applications in Industry and Research IV
Ryszard S. Romaniuk; Stefan Simrock; Vladimir M. Lutkovski, Editor(s)