Low Cost front-end readout electronic for instrumentation used in Neutron experiments.

• Main Authors: Lombigit, Lojius, Hamidon, Mohd Nizar, Khalid, Mohd Ashhar, Sulaiman, Nasri
• Format: Article
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/23484/1/Low%20Cost%20front.pdf; http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/23484/; http://www.academicjournals.org/journal/IJPS/edition/23_MAY
• Institution: Universiti Putra Malaysia

In the field of material characterization, the neutron scattering technique is found to be useful in so many applications. This technique requires a position sensitive neutron detector (PSND) and their front-end readouts (FER) electronic to detect the position of neutron interactions. Normally, the PSND is designed for specific applications and has unique technical specifications. Therefore, it requires a customised electronic FER to match its specifications. Furthermore, a large active area requires a large number of FER electronic and, therefore, there is, also, an increased development cost. This paper presents a simple and low-cost design for FER electronic which consists of an eight channels preamplifier-shaper suitable for instrumentation used in neutron experiments. This FER was built entirely with low-noise FET-input operational amplifier (Op-amp) and passive components. The development cost is around U.S. $50/channel. Results have shown that it is capable of accepting a wide dynamic range input charge (20 to 600 fC) with an excellent output linearity (nonlinearity < 1%). It has a good equivalent noise charge (ENC) with a performance average of 2113 e- and is less sensitive to input capacitance variation (24 e-/pF).