Development of the pulse-shape discrimination LSI for Astro-E hard X-ray detector

We have developed a pulse-shape discrimination LSI for the Astro-E Hard X-ray Detector (HXD). In the detector, the X-ray and non X-ray background will be reduced drastically by use of well-type phoswich counters in the compound-eye configuration. The well-type phoswich counter will use GSO(Ce) or YAP(Ce) scintillator for its detection part, and well-shaped BGO for the shielding part. The pulse-shape discriminator (PSD) described here will be used to select clean hits on the detection part, rejecting those depositing some energy in BGO. The PSD is designed as a bipolar semi-custom LSI to reduce its power consumption and size, and to enhance its reliability. The first delivery of the PSD-LSI has been tested to be acceptable for Astro-E HXD.