A readout circuit dedicated for the detection of chemiluminescence using a silicon photomultiplier
A readout circuit dedicated for the detection of the chemiluminescence phenomenon using a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) is presented. During chemiluminescence, light is generated as a result of chemical reaction. Chemiluminescence is used in many applications within medicine, chemistry, biology and biotechnology, and is one of the most important sensing techniques in biomedical science and clinical medicine. The front end electronics consist of a preamplifier and a fast shaper this produces pulses, the peaking time which is 3.6 ns for a single photon and the FWHM is 3.8 ns. The system has been optimised to measure chemiluminescence it is sensitive at the level of single photons, it generates a low number of overlapping pulses and is accurate. Two methods of signal detection are analysed and compared: the counting of events and amplitude detection. The relationship between the chemiluminescence light intensity and the concentration of the chemical compound (luminol) is linear in the range of the tested concentrations and has strong linearity parameters and low prediction intervals.