氮化硼个人剂量计低功耗前端CMOS芯片电路设计

Design of Low-power Consumption Front-end CMOS Chip Circuit for Boron Nitride Personal Dosimeter

  • 摘要: 本文设计了一款针对氮化硼中子探测器的个人剂量计的低功耗、低噪声CMOS电子学电路。该电路主要包括低噪声电荷灵敏前置放大器、滤波成形电路、基准电流源及电压甄别电路。氮化硼中子探测器作为第4代宽禁带半导体核辐射探测器,具有较低的室温漏电流,使其适合于常温下工作。该探测器无需额外的中子灵敏转换层可直接将中子信号转化为电荷信号。前端电子学电路将探测器的电荷信号转换为电压信号,经过整形放大后通过电压比较器输出脉冲信号进行计数。为确保低功耗,电路采用SMIC 55 nm CMOS工艺设计与制造,工作电压1.2 V,单通道电流186 µA。放大部分采用增益自举结构对输入管噪声进行优化。提出了一种动态可调的反馈电阻结构,通过M1~M8晶体管构成的差分对与电流镜机制,结合低通滤波器抑制漏电流引起的基线漂移,显著提升了电路的稳定性与线性度,同时可有效补偿探测器漏电流。该电路的仿真测试表明零电容等效噪声电荷为3e,噪声斜率为1.21e/pF。每通道功耗为0.22 mW,输出转换增益为5 mV/fC,线性度小于1%。

     

    Abstract: In the context of radiation monitoring for occupational safety, personal dosimeters require highly sensitive and energy-efficient electronic interfaces. This work presented a low-power consumption and low-noise CMOS integrated circuit specifically tailored for personal dosimeters incorporating boron nitride (BN) neutron detectors. As a fourth-generation wide band gap semiconductor, the BN detector exhibited exceptionally low room-temperature leakage current (below 1 pA), enabling reliable operation without cryogenic cooling. Its unique feature of directly converting incident neutron signals into charge signals via the 10B(n,α)7Li reaction eliminated the need for an additional conversion layer, streamlining the detection chain. The front-end ASIC architecture was comprised by four critical modules: a low-noise charge-sensitive preamplifier (CSA), a CR-RC shaping filter, a precision reference current source, and a hysteresis voltage discriminator. The CSA employed gain bootstrapping structure with a NMOS input, where the gate-source voltage of the input transistor is dynamically stabilized to enhance noise performance. This configuration achieves a transimpedance gain of 5 mV/fC while maintaining a low input-referred noise floor. A key innovation lies in the dynamically adjustable feedback resistor network, which addresses baseline drift induced by detector leakage. The structure integrates a differential pair (M1-M8) with a current mirror biasing mechanism and a low-pass filter (RC=10 μs), creating a feedback loop that continuously compensates for slow leakage currents. This adaptive design ensures the circuit remains linear across a wide range of radiation fluxes (10² to 106 h−1), with an integral nonlinearity (INL) of <1%. Fabricated in SMIC 55 nm CMOS technology, the circuit operates at a 1.2 V supply voltage, achieving a single-channel power consumption of 0.22 mW (186 μA current draw). Post-layout simulations demonstrate an equivalent noise charge (ENC) of 3e at zero detector capacitance, degrading to 1.21e/pF with increasing capacitance, making it suitable for detectors with up to 10 pF capacitance. The shaping filter’s 5 μs peaking time optimizes the signal-to-noise ratio for typical neutron-induced charge pulses (rise time is about 1 μs), ensuring reliable pulse counting in noisy environments. This design exemplifies the integration of advanced semiconductor technology with nuclear detection principles, offering a compact, low-power solution for next-generation personal dosimetry systems. The dynamically adaptive feedback mechanism sets a new benchmark for front-end stability in radiation detection applications, particularly for portable devices requiring long-term operation on battery power.

     

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