• Journal of Infrared and Millimeter Waves
  • Vol. 41, Issue 1, 2021084 (2022)
Qi-Wen ZHANG1、2, Hong-Lei CHEN1, and Rui-Jun DING1、*
Author Affiliations
  • 1Key Laboratory of Infrared Imaging Materials and Detectors,Shanghai Institute of Technology Physics,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Shanghai 200083,China
  • 2University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100049,China
  • show less
    DOI: 10.11972/j.issn.1001-9014.2022.01.033 Cite this Article
    Qi-Wen ZHANG, Hong-Lei CHEN, Rui-Jun DING. High precision time-to-digital conversion circuit for mercury cadmium telluride APD detector at 77 K[J]. Journal of Infrared and Millimeter Waves, 2022, 41(1): 2021084 Copy Citation Text show less

    Abstract

    HgCdTe avalanche photodiode (APD) is the frontier research on infrared focal plane technology. High-precision time stamp's readout circuit is the basis of the APD focal plane at 77 K, which directly affects APD infrared focal plane performance. Time-to-digital conversion circuit (TDC) is one of the methods to achieve high-precision time stamping. Based on the analysis of MOSFET device at low temperature, we design a vernier TDC circuit, which uses a synchronous counter to quantize an integer multiple of the periods to achieve a coarse count of 6 bits. We use the high-frequency clock multiplied by the on-chip phase-locked loop to quantify the part that is less than one clock cycle to achieve a fine-count of 6 bits output. The circuit adopts standard CMOS process tape out, and our circuit works at a master-frequency of 120 MHz. At 77 K, the circuit tests can distinguish the time resolution of 236.280 ps. The DNL is within -0.54~0.71 LSB, and the INL is within -1.32~1.21 LSB.
    Qi-Wen ZHANG, Hong-Lei CHEN, Rui-Jun DING. High precision time-to-digital conversion circuit for mercury cadmium telluride APD detector at 77 K[J]. Journal of Infrared and Millimeter Waves, 2022, 41(1): 2021084
    Download Citation