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PUBLICATIONS

High-gain cryogenic amplifier assembly employing a commercial CMOS operational amplifier

Published

Author(s)

Solomon I. Woods, James E. Proctor, Alan W. Smith, Timothy M. Jung

Abstract

We have developed a cryogenic amplifier for the measurement of small current signals from cryogenic optical detectors. Typically operated with gain near 10^7, the amplifier performs well from DC to greater than 30 kHz, and exhibits noise level near the Johnson limit. Care has been taken in the design and materials to control heat flow and temperatures throughout the entire detector-amplifier assembly. A simple one-board version of the amplifier assembly dissipates 8 mW to our detector cryostat cold stage, and a two-board version can dissipate as little as 17 μW to the detector cold stage. With current noise baseline of about 10 fA/(Hz)^1/2, the cryogenic amplifier is generally useful for cooled infrared detectors, and using blocked impurity band detectors operated at 10 K the amplifier enables noise power levels of 2.5 fW/(Hz)^1/2 for detection of optical wavelengths near 10 μm.
Citation
Review of Scientific Instruments
Volume
86
Pub Type
Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4923277
Local Download

Keywords

cryogenic amplifier, low noise amplifier, cryogenic infrared detector, BIB detector
Metrology

Citation

Woods, S. , Proctor, J. , Smith, A. and Jung, T. (2015), High-gain cryogenic amplifier assembly employing a commercial CMOS operational amplifier, Review of Scientific Instruments, [online], https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4923277 (Accessed October 9, 2025)

Issues

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Created July 1, 2015, Updated November 24, 2020
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