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High Bandwidth 16-Channel PMT Amplifier

 

Greg Eakins has designed a new high speed amplifier for a multi-channel photomultiplier tube. The Garth Simpson Research Group could find no commercially available solution that met all of their criteria, so they found one that came close and gave it to us for improvement. The new design improved the photon detection speed from 180 ns to just 2 ns. Cathy McIntyre did the fine assembly work on this circuit, with many components measuring less than 400 microns. The new design integrates seamlessly into the original product and greatly improves the speed at which they can take an image.

Request: Increase the speed of a commercial Hamamatsu photomultiplier tube's (PMT) photon detection speed from 200ns to <5ns.

Result:  Custom built amplifier board that fully integrates into the Hamamatsu PMT.  Rise time improved from ~200ns to ~1.6ns.  Outputs each channel directly to SMA and conntect to an all-in-one low-noise power supply.