Abstract Data digitisation of the analogue signals from detectors to digital data is an essential process in ion beam analysis (IBA). The low-cost, easy availability and development environments that have a low learning threshold makes system-on-chip (SoC) microcontrollers (μC) attractive for this task. These μC combine, on one die, analogue and digital inputs and outputs with serial USB interfaces, which opens up simple implementation of tailor-made interfaces for specific IBA measurement systems. We have investigated the design and performance limitations based on development of three different digitisation interfaces for IBA. These were a two-channel nuclear instrumentation module (NIM) ADC event mode interface (EMI) for a high-resolution magnetic RBS spectrometer, a simple headless-multi-channel analyser (MCA) and a combined dual channel headless MCA and EMI. It is shown that SoC μC based interfaces for digitisation of analogue spectroscopy pulses in IBA systems can be implemented for material costs less than 100 €. The performance of the SoC devices for many IBA applications is close to what can be achieved with state-of-the-art instruments. The simple pulse spectroscopy interface circuit and software are included in the auxiliary archive.
[1]
Harry J. Whitlow.
Electronics for Application of Ion Beams in Nanoscience
,
2009
.
[2]
Sameer R. Sonkusale,et al.
A background calibration scheme for pipelined ADCs including non-linear operational amplifier gain and reference error correction
,
2004,
IEEE International SOC Conference, 2004. Proceedings..
[3]
R. F. Fleming,et al.
Dead Time, Pileup, and Accurate Gamma-Ray Spectrometry
,
1995
.
[4]
W. Leo.
Techniques for Nuclear and Particle Physics Experiments: A How-To Approach
,
1987
.
[6]
C.M.B.A. Correia,et al.
A very low-cost portable multichannel analyzer
,
2000,
2000 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium. Conference Record (Cat. No.00CH37149).
[7]
W. Leo,et al.
Techniques for Nuclear and Particle Physics Experiments
,
1987
.