Development of a radiation hard version of the Analog Pipeline Chip APC128

TL;DR

This paper presents the development and testing of a radiation-hard version of the APC128 analog pipeline chip, designed for high-radiation environments in particle physics experiments, with successful prototype measurements guiding the final design.

Contribution

It introduces a radiation-hard version of the APC128 chip using DMILL technology, with prototype results informing the final design for HERA upgrades.

Findings

Prototype measurements of amplifier variations

Successful radiation hardness testing

Informed design choices for final chip version

Abstract

The Analog Pipeline Chip (APC) is a low noise, low power readout chip for silicon micro strip detectors with 128 channels containing an analog pipeline of 32 buffers depth. The chip has been designed for operation at HERA with a power dissipation of 300-400 muW per channel and has been used also in several other particle physics experiments. In this paper we describe the development of a radiation hard version of this chip that will be used in the H1 vertex detector for operation at the luminosity upgraded HERA machine. A 128 channel prototyping chip with several amplifier variations has been designed in the radiation hard DMILL technology and measured. The results of various parameter variations are presented in this paper. Based on this, the design choice for the final production version of the APC128-DMILL has been made.