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Updated: Jun 2, 2026
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Microfluidic Platform with Multiplexed Electronic Detection for Spatial Tracking of Particles
Published on: March 13, 2017
Microchannel plate cross-strip detectors with high spatial and temporal resolution.
O Siegmund1, A Tremsin, J Vallerga
1Experimental Astrophysics Group, Space Sciences Laboratory, 7 Gauss Way, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Nuclear Instruments & Methods in Physics Research. Section A, Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
|May 17, 2011
Summary
This study presents a new cross-strip imaging readout system for precise event position and timing detection. The developed system achieves sub-10mm resolution and high-speed photon encoding for advanced scientific applications.
Area of Science:
- Physics
- Instrumentation
- Signal Processing
Background:
- Microchannel plate (MCP) detectors are crucial for sensitive particle and photon detection.
- Accurate event localization and timing are essential for many scientific experiments.
- Existing readout electronics can be a bottleneck for high-rate data acquisition.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and test a novel cross-strip imaging readout system for MCP detectors.
- To achieve high spatial resolution and precise timing for detected events.
- To enable high-count-rate data acquisition with parallel processing.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a cross-strip anode design with charge division and centroiding for X-Y position encoding.
- Developed fully parallel channel position encoding electronics, including pre-amplifier ASICs, a 64-channel ADC, and an FPGA processing board.
- Implemented a software Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter and centroiding algorithm for data analysis.
Main Results:
- Achieved spatial resolution better than 10mm with a 32mm cross-strip anode detector at low MCP gain (∼10^6).
- Demonstrated self-triggered event timing accuracy of 750 ps.
- Showcased system capability for encoding photons at rates exceeding 1 MHz using FPGA-based centroiding.
Conclusions:
- The developed cross-strip imaging readout system offers a promising solution for high-resolution, high-speed event detection.
- The system's performance metrics (spatial resolution, timing accuracy, and count rate) are suitable for demanding scientific applications.
- Integration of ASICs, ADCs, and FPGAs enables efficient and parallelized event processing.
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