A fully integrated low noise HEMT charge preamplifier

The design criteria of the first fully integrated charge preamplifier completely based on HEMTs, together with few preliminary tests of the circuit, has been already presented by the authors [G. Bertuccio et al., Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 338 (1994) 582]. In the previous work the circuit was tested directly on wafer using coplanar probes. In this Letter we present a more accurate characterisation of the amplifier, including its noise and linearity. The results here presented have been obtained with the amplifier diced and bonded in a suitable package for low noise applications.