Speaker
Description
Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs), with their compact form factor, high gain, and fast response, are enabling a new generation of fast-timing detectors across several fields and applications. Scaling up these systems requires readout electronics that combine high performance, low power consumption and dense integration. We present FastIC+, a custom ASIC developed for fast-timing applications, capable of processing and digitizing signals from SiPMs or other high-gain photodetectors (e.g., photomultiplier tubes, microchannel plates) with a power consumption of ~12 mW/channel. FastIC+ integrates a Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) with 25 ps binning and achieves a time jitter of ~30 ps FWHM.
We evaluated FastIC+ performance in two different applications: Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (TOFMS). In PET, we reported—for the first time—a coincidence time resolution below 100 ps using full-ASIC readout. Modular readout solutions for 64 and 256 channels are under development to enable their use in next-generation PET systems. In TOFMS, we presented the first successful use of SiPM arrays read out by individual TDCs to acquire mass spectra from known samples. We show that a detector based on SiPMs and FastIC+ can achieve sub-100 ps time resolution, outperforming current state-of-the-art TOFMS detectors. These results illustrate the potential of FastIC+ as a versatile technology for high-precision timing applications across multiple domains.
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