Experimental qualification of an 8-channel selectable-gain CMOS frontend for Double-Sided Silicon Strip Detectors

We are developing a multi-channel double-polarity selectable-gain frontend to be coupled to the Double-Sided Silicon Strip Detectors (DSSSD) of a novel versatile and modular Femtoscope ARray for Correlation and Spectroscopy, named FARCOS, featuring high angular and energy resolution and able to address several open cases in nuclear physics (nuclear dynamics and asy-EOS). The key feature of FARCOS, not present in similar existing correlator systems as MUST2 and HiRA, is the capability to perform pulse-shape analysis in order to fully identify the particles stopping even in the first detection layer. Therefore the frontend electronics to be coupled to the DSSSDs layers has to amplify the whole signal waveform without shape distortion. We developed an AC coupled frontend circuit in 0.35 μm CMOS AMS technology. To face different experimental scenarios we implemented 4 selectable gain configuration corresponding to different full scale ranges. A single design amplifies the signals coming from both junction-side and ohmic-side strips and for the two different detector thicknesses. In this work we present the design and the experimental qualification of the multichannel frontend.