A 2D imager for X-ray FELs with a 65 nm CMOS readout based on per-pixel signal compression and 10 bit A/D conversion

A readout channel for applications to X-ray diffraction imaging at free electron lasers has been developed in a 65 nm CMOS technology. The analog front-end circuit can achieve an input dynamic range of 100 dB by leveraging a novel signal compression technique based on the non-linear features of MOS capacitors. Trapezoidal shaping is accomplished through a transconductor and a switched capacitor circuit, performing gated integration and correlated double sampling. A small area, low power 10 bit successive approximation register (SAR) ADC, operated in a time-interleaved fashion, is used for numerical conversion of the amplitude measurement. Operation at 5 MHz of the analog channel including the shaper was demonstrated. Also, the channel was found to be compliant with single 1 keV photon resolution at 1.25 MHz. The ADC provides a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 56 dB, corresponding to an equivalent number of bits (ENOB) of 9 bits, and a differential non linearity DNL<1 LSB at a sampling rate slightly larger than 1.8 MHz.