Author
English, Erik
Other Contributors
Hella, Mona Mostafa; Saulnier, Gary J.; Bhat, Ishwara B.;
Date Issued
2015-12
Subject
Electrical engineering
Degree
MS;
Terms of Use
This electronic version is a licensed copy owned by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Copyright of original work retained by author.;
Abstract
Solid-state neutron detectors represent a potential replacement technology for Helium-3 gas filled tubes used for detection of special nuclear materials. When scaling these detectors to very large areas the design of the associated electronics becomes critical to overall detection efficiency. This thesis explores the implementation of low noise readout electronics optimized for large area semiconductor neutron detector arrays. The readout system consists of a charge sensitive preamplifier, pulse shaper, and fast threshold crossing discriminator. Three different designs have been implemented, two of which are built using discrete parts on a printed circuit board while the third has been fabricated using the IBM 0.13um CMOS process. Additionally, a novel preamplifier topology, utilizing a capacitance canceling input stage, is presented. Experimental results show that the utilization of a capacitance canceling stage has the capability to lower preamplifier noise by up to 15%. Finally, the CMOS implementation possesses the highest reported performance, in terms of noise and power, for high capacitance detectors to date.;
Description
December 2015; School of Engineering
Department
Dept. of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering;
Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Relationships
Rensselaer Theses and Dissertations Online Collection;
Access
Users may download and share copies with attribution in accordance with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. No commercial use or derivatives are permitted without the explicit approval of the author.;