A Sub-electron-noise Skipper-CCD Readout ASIC with Improved Channel-to-channel Isolation and an Integrated Cryogenic Voltage Reference

Journal Article · Thu Mar 19 00:00:00 EDT 2026 · No journal information

OSTI ID:3024641

Alcalde Bessia, Fabricio; Chavez, Claudio; England, Troy; Sun, Hongzhi; Lathrop, Andrew; Braga, Davide; Sofo-Haro, Miguel; Estrada, Juan; Fahim, Farah

The MIDNA application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) are a series of skipper-CCD readout chips fabricated in a 65 nm low-power CMOS process that implement a correlated double sampling signal processing chain based on dual-slope integrators. They are capable of working from room to cryogenic temperatures, down to 84 K. The present iteration of the ASIC has been fabricated including several design updates and the addition of an on-chip voltage reference, resulting in improved performance. This work presents the main vulnerabilities solved, the changes carried out, and the resulting performance benefits. Measurements with a skipper-CCD and the ASIC at 140 K showed that the single-electron resolution can be reached by averaging the measured charge in the analog domain using the analog pile-up technique with a readout noise as low as 0.11 erms of equivalent charge for 1200 samples. The channel-to-channel crosstalk was also characterized showing values better than -62 dB.

• Research Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Department of Energy
• DOE Contract Number: 89243024CSC000002
• OSTI ID: 3024641
• Report Number(s): FERMILAB-PUB-25-0752-ETD-PPD; oai:inspirehep.net:3131717; arXiv:2603.18993
• Journal Information: No journal information, Journal Name: No journal information
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English