Optimized linear pulse amplifier circuit based on a composite op amp configuration

We present a high count rate linear pulse amplifier with bipolar shaping to be used in Nuclear Spectrometry applications. The amplifier is based on a traditional single chain architecture containing an initial passive differentiation with a pole zero cancellation circuit, multi-stage controllable gain, active integration with 4^th order Butterworth filter and final active differentiation with output buffering. The gain stages use fast cascaded amplifiers with both voltage and current feedback amplifiers to combine the excellent DC performance of the former with the very good dynamic behavior of the last ones. The performance and the design cautions associated to this architecture are discussed