NALU SCIENTIFIC, LLC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 24b

Description

The detection of individual charged particles, photons and neutrons and estimation of their properties, momentum and direction of arrival is the basis for a wide range of scientific and commercial applications from high-energy, nuclear and astrophysics to medical imaging and diagnosis. We are targeting the data acquisition market for medium to large size scientific experiments in Nuclear Physics, High Energy Physics and Astrophysics. These complex experiments require hundreds to thousands of recording channels capable of fast data acquisition and signal processing. The rapid processing allows timing resolutions in the order of 10s of picosecond which will translate to highly accurate estimation of charged particles and their tracks. This mandates design and development of custom electronic equipment to highly integrate functionality and performance and bring the cost per channel down. Especially, low cost, low power designs are attractive for experiments with thousands of recording channels. We propose to design and make commercially available the “SiREAD”: a low-cost, low power and high density System-on Chip (SoC) capable of analog signal conditioning, fast waveform sampling and integrated readout and signal processing capabilities. The SiREAD device will also have calibration and monitoring circuitry in addition to a deep sampling buffer making it suitable for large Nuclear Physics experiments with potentially long trigger delays. Design and development of the advanced SiREAD chip which is built based on the existing TARGET chip by integrating into one SoC (i) analog signal conditioning circuits and bias monitoring, (ii) an optimized version of TARGET, and (iii) digital readout and signal processing block capabilities (triggering, sparsification and data reduction). The outcome will be a full design ready for submission to a semiconductor fab house for fabrication. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: This device can be used by scientists in high energy and nuclear physics experiments for fast analog data acquisition. Also, it has applications in general purpose instrumentations and medical/PET imaging. We anticipate to be able to sell the device as an OEM manufacturer, provide associated design services or license it to a larger device manufacturer due to the low cost and low power nature of the design which will give us a competitive edge.