Characterization of the VEGA ASIC coupled to large area position-sensitive Silicon Drift Detectors

TL;DR

This paper presents the experimental characterization of VEGA, a custom ASIC designed for large-area Silicon Drift Detectors, demonstrating its noise performance and suitability for high-resolution X-ray applications.

Contribution

It introduces VEGA, a novel ASIC tailored for large-area SDDs, with detailed noise performance analysis in integrated and standalone configurations.

Findings

VEGA ASIC achieves low noise performance suitable for X-ray detection.

Integrated system demonstrates effective coupling between ASIC and large-area SDD.

Results support VEGA's application in space and medical X-ray imaging.

Abstract

Low-noise, position-sensitive Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs) are particularly useful for experiments in which a good energy resolution combined with a large sensitive area is required, as in the case of X-ray astronomy space missions and medical applications. This paper presents the experimental characterization of VEGA, a custom Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) used as the front-end electronics for XDXL-2, a large-area (30.5 cm^2) SDD prototype. The ASICs were integrated on a specifically developed PCB hosting also the detector. Results on the ASIC noise performances, both stand-alone and bonded to the large area SDD, are presented and discussed.