Charge amplifier


Posted on Feb 5, 2014

A charge amplifier is an amplifier whose equivalent input impedance is a capacitive reactance that is very high at low frequencies. Thus contrary to what its name may suggest, a charge amplifier does not amplify the electric charge present at its input. Its function is actually to obtain a voltage proportional to that charge and yield a low output impedance.


Charge amplifier
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Hence it is a charge-to-voltage converter. Common applications include piezoelectric sensors and photodiodes, in which the charge output from the transducer is converted into a voltage. Charge amplifiers are often found in instrumentation, and in the readout circuitry of CCD imagers and flat-panel X-ray detector arrays. In read-out circuits the objective is usually to measure the very small charge stored within an in-pixel capacitor, despite the capacitance of the circuit-track to the readout circuit being a couple of orders of magnitude greater than the in-pixel capacitor. Gain is dependent only on the feedback capacitor, unlike voltage amplifiers, which are affected greatly by the input capacitance of the amplifier and the parallel capacitance of the cable [1] [2]




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