From September 15 to 19, 2025, Nuclear Instruments participated in the annual meeting of the Italian Physical Society (SIF) in Palermo. Together with our partner CAEN, we showcased our latest innovations in digital electronics for spectroscopy and presented a dedicated talk on the new Ultraspectra digitizer.
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Date
Sep 22, 2025
SIF 2025 – Palermo
From September 15 to 19, 2025, the 111th National Congress of the Italian Physical Society (SIF) was hosted in Palermo. The event gathered hundreds of physicists from all over Italy, providing an important platform to present advances in fundamental physics, applied research, and technological innovation.
This year, Nuclear Instruments joined the conference with a dedicated exhibition booth, organized together with our long-time partner CAEN.
Exhibition Booth with CAEN
At the stand, we promoted our latest solutions for digital data acquisition and spectroscopy, including:
- Sci-Compiler with the DT1260 kit – the graphical FPGA programming environment for real-time DAQ.
- Ultraspectra – a 20-bit, 160 MSPS digitizer designed for advanced X-ray spectroscopy.
- DT5771 – the new MCA with an advanced web-based analysis interface for gamma spectroscopy.
- DT4810 – a brand-new compact platform for high-performance DAQ.
- Detector Emulator Lite – a simplified version of our detector emulator system.
- FERS – the Front-End Readout System for scalable, distributed data acquisition.
The booth represented a valuable meeting point to interact with researchers, discuss applications, and explore future directions in nuclear instrumentation and digital DAQ technologies.
Scientific Contribution: Ultraspectra Talk
As part of the scientific program, Nuclear Instruments contributed with a dedicated talk on Ultraspectra, presenting the technology behind the 20-bit, 160 MSPS digitizer and its applications in high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy.
The presentation highlighted the digitizer’s unique combination of precision and speed, its firmware features, and the integration with advanced software tools for real-time data analysis.
Interleaving 20-bit 160 Msps ADC architecture for direct sampling in X-ray spectroscopy.
We present a novel digital signal processing technique for X-ray detectors, particularly silicon drift detectors (SDDs), optimized for high-count rate applications without compromising energy resolution. Traditional approaches employing transistor reset preamplifiers encounter significant limitations due to the dominant voltage ramp at the preamplifier output, which can obscure low-amplitude signals of interest. To overcome this, we adopted a high-resolution 20-bit SAR ADC capable of directly sampling the preamplifier output, offering a dynamic range exceeding 1:1000000 and enabling effective signal acquisition despite the ramp. To achieve high throughput, we implemented a system architecture based on four interleaved ADCs, providing an aggregate sampling rate of 160 Msps. Signal readout and control are handled by a Zynq System-on-Chip (SoC), which also manages phase alignment, gain calibration, digital filtering via a trapezoidal algorithm, and PC interfacing. Initial experimental validation was carried out using the multipixel SDD ARDESIA detector developed at Politecnico di Milano. Despite the prototypal status, our system demonstrated superior resolution compared to conventional analog reshaping techniques. Specifically, we achieved a full width at half-maximum (FWHM) resolution of 128 eV ad 2 μs peaking time, and 140 eV at an event rate of 1 Mcps using a faster shaping configuration.
