RHIP, a Radio-controlled High-Voltage Insulated Picoammeter and its usage in studying ion backflow in MPGD-based photon detectors

TL;DR

This paper introduces RHIP, a cost-effective, radio-controlled picoammeter capable of high-precision, multichannel current measurements up to 8 kV, and demonstrates its application in studying ion backflow in MPGD photon detectors.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, low-cost, multichannel picoammeter system with high precision and radio control, specifically designed for studying ion backflow in MPGD photon detectors.

Findings

Achieved picoampere-level measurement precision.

Successfully measured ion backflow in MPGD photon detectors.

System supports up to 256 channels with low power consumption.

Abstract

A picoammeter system has been developed and engineering. It consists in a current-voltage converter, based on an operational amplifier with very low input current, a high precision ADC, a radio controlled data acquisition unit and the computer-based control, visualization and storage. The precision is of the order of a tenth of picoampers and it can measure currents between electrodes at potentials up to 8 kV. The system is battery powered and a number of strategies have been implemented to limit the power consumption. The system is designed for multichannel applications, up to 256 parallel channels. The overall implementation is cost-effective to make the availability of multichannel setups easily affordable. The design, implementation and performance of the picoammeter system are described in detail as well as a an application: the measurement of ion backflow in MPGD-based photon detectors.