Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The CRIC (CCD Readout IC) ASIC has been designed to meet the power, space and radiation requirements of the SNAP satellite. It incorporates four channels consisting of a pre-amplifier, double correlated sampler and pipeline A/D converter with integrated voltage reference. The CRIC chip has been specifically designed to operate both at room temperature and at typical focal plane temperatures down to 130K. This minimizes wiring complexity while maintaining signal integrity on complex focal planes. CRIC is half of a two ASIC CCD readout system; the other ASIC in development is a bias and clock voltage generator. Also in development, are 16 and 32 channel versions of CRIC for use with hybrid photodiode and near infrared pixel arrays.