Low cost pulse shaper for use with silicon PIN diodes

A flexible, small, low-cost analog pulse shaper and amplifier circuit for Si PIN photodiode detectors is discussed. The shaping amplifier produces both a fast negative output signal with <10-ns risetime for timing measurements and a slow positive output signal with peaking times from 500 ns to 10 mu s for energy measurements. The gains for the two signals can be set independently. The maximum output amplitude for the fast signal is -1.5 V, and +10 V for the slow signal. The resolution for the energy channel is <10-keV electronic contribution, giving a total of 17 keV with alpha particles. The resolution for the timing channel is <1-ns electronics with a total of 2 ns with alpha -particles.<
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