Events Calendar

Title: The design of an extended range IC for a solar energetic particle telescope

Presenter: Ashley Antony Gomez

Advisor: Professor Brian Walsh

Chair: Professor Rabia Yazicigil Kirby

Committee: Professor Brian Walsh, Professor Joshua Semeter, Professor Rabia Yazicigil Kirby, Dr. Ronald Knepper, Dr. Shrikanth Kanekal

Abstract: Solar energetic particles (SEP) originate at the Sun and are energized and transported by physical processes such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. To understand these processes, we need an instrument that can measure multiple species of SEPs over a wide energy range. ACSEPT (A Compact Solar Energetic Particle Telescope) is an energetic particle telescope made up of a stack of solid state detectors (SSD) and can measure H to Fe ions with energies of 0.5MeV/nuc to 100MeV/nuc. The Boston Extended Range Amplitude (BEAR) IC is a single channel readout IC designed to enable ACSEPT. BEAR contains a novel charge sensitive amplifier (CSA) that can dynamically extend the range of the entire system by 2 orders of magnitude. The CSA uses switchable capacitors that are added in parallel in real-time to the detector to share the input charge deposited by energetic particles, which reduces the input signal and prevents the circuit from saturating. The first prototype of the BEAR IC was designed and fabricated using TSMC’s 130nm technology. Experimental results show that the IC was able to measure between 1.5MeV to 1GeV of energy deposited (dE) by energetic particles in the detector. The BEAR IC could be used with a telescopic detector stack like the ACSEPT instrument to gather data required to understand different SEP energization processes. A second revision of the IC is currently being developed and will be fabricated in the last quarter of 2023.