A 430 μW Pulse Shape Discrimination System-on-Chip

This paper presents a single-chip, low-power electronic pulse processing solution that is capable of performing pulse shape discrimination when paired with a Cs 2 LiYCl 6 :Ce radiation detector. It integrates all analog and digital processing required for pulse shape discrimination, forming a complete system-on-chip for this application. It uses an event-based analog front end to substantially reduce power consumption compared to non-integrated, continuous-sampling-based processing electronics, consuming only 430 μW when detecting radiation at 1 kcps, which is substantially less than existing works. As a trade-off, the pulse shape discrimination figure-of-merit is lower than that of higher-powered systems. This makes it suitable for neutron and gamma detection applications where battery life and portability are key performance metrics. The presented chip contains analog channels capable of performing simultaneous pulse shape discrimination and pulse height analysis for each detection, measuring the particle's energy and classifying it as a neutron or gamma locally on the system-on-chip. The chip was fabricated on a 0.13 μm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology, characterized using an AmBe source, and demonstrated a pulse shape discrimination figure-of-merit of 1.36.