FROST: a low-noise high-rate photon counting ASIC for X-ray applications

FRONTier RADiography is an R&D project to assess the feasibility of digital mammography with Synchrotron Radiation at the ELETTRA Light Source in Trieste. In order to reach an acceptable time duration of the exam, a fast-and low-noise photon counting ASIC has been developed in collaboration with Aurelia Microelettronica, called Frontrad ReadOut SysTem. It is a multichannel counting system, each channel being made of a low-noise charge-sensitive preamplifier optimized for X-lay energy range (10 100 keV), a CR-RC2 shaper. a discriminator and a 16-bit counter. In older to set the discriminator threshold, a set of a global 6-bit DAC and a local (per channel) 3-bit DAC has been implemented within the ASIC. We report on the measurements done with the 8-channel prototype chip and the comparison with the simulation results.