A fully integrated Xray spectrometer.
The electronics system combines a microcontroller-based digital pulse processor (DPP) with ultra-low noise power supplies and highly efficient step-up DC-DC converters for providing HV biasing to a silicon drift detector.
This small formfactor contains everything needed to operate a single X-ray drift detector using only USB connection. Some notable features of the design are:
- Multiple ultra-low noise power lines for analog electronics, derived from USB.
- -150V biasing voltage for the silicon drift detector, generated by a filtered DC-DC converter.
- Analog filters for signal conditioning.
- Digital filters for peak processing.
- USB communication interface accessible with any programming language.
While the electronics may not achieve the maximum speed of FPGA-based systems, it is capable of processing signals with up to 500k events per second while consuming only 80mA from the USB. For more detailed information on digital pulse processing, please refer to the dedicated project.
