Fast and flexible CCD-driver system using fast DAC and FPGA

We have developed a completely new type of general-purpose CCD-data acquisition system which enables one to drive any type of CCD using any type of clocking mode. A CCD driver system widely used before consisted of an analog multiplexer (MPX), a digital-to-analog converter (DAC), and an operational amplifier. A DAC is used to determine high- and low-voltage levels and the MPX selects each voltage level using a TTL clock. In this kind of driver board, it is difficult to reduce the noise caused by an electrical short between high and low levels in MPX and also to select many kinds of different voltage levels. Recent developments in semiconductor IC enable us to use a very fast sampling (∼10 MHz) DAC with low cost. We thus develop the new driver system using a fast DAC in order to determine both the voltage level of the clock and the clocking timing. We use Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to control the DAC. We have constructed the data acquisition system and found that the CCD functions well with our new system. The energy resolution of Mn Kα has a full-width at half-maximum of ≃150 eV and the readout noise of our system is ≃8e−.