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Title	Characterization of a 9-decade femtoampere ASIC front-end for radiation monitoring
Author(s)	Voulgari, Evgenia (CERN ; Ecole Polytechnique, Lausanne) ; Noy, Matthew (CERN) ; Anghinolfi, Francis (CERN) ; Perrin, Daniel (CERN) ; Krummenacher, François (Ecole Polytechnique, Lausanne) ; Kayal, Maher (Ecole Polytechnique, Lausanne)
Publication	SISSA, 2017
Number of pages	5
In:	PoS TWEPP-17 (2017) 003
In:	Topical Workshop on Electronics for Particle Physics, Santa Cruz, Ca, United States Of America, 11 - 15 Sep 2017, pp.003
DOI	10.22323/1.313.0003
Subject category	Detectors and Experimental Techniques
Abstract	An ultra-low current sensing digitizer circuit was designed for radiation monitoring for personnel and environmental safety at CERN.The Ultralow Picoammeter 2 (Utopia 2) ASIC includes some key functionalities like on-chip active leakage current compensation, charge balancing and range changing. It was designed in AMS 0.35 $\mu$m technology that was selected for its low leakage current performance. The architecture is based on the asynchronous current to frequency converter (CFC) and the front-end can digitize input currents over a wide dynamic range of 9 decades. If the measurement time is equal to 100 s, the ASIC can measure current as low as 1 femtoampere (fA). The calibration procedure and the measurements of the Utopia 2 ASIC are summarized in this article. The ASIC has been characterized for its ultra-low current performance at the Swiss Federal Institute of Metrology (METAS).
Copyright/License	Copyright owned by the author(s) publication: (License: CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0)

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