Monolithic pixel sensors for charged particle detection and imaging applications have been designed and fabricated using commercially available, deep-submicron Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) processes, which insulate a thin layer of integrated full CMOS electronics from a high-resistivity substrate by means of a buried oxide. The substrate is contacted from the electronics layer through vias etched in the buried oxide, allowing pixel implanting and reverse biasing. This paper summarizes the performances achieved with a first prototype manufactured in the OKI 0.15 micrometer FD-SOI process, featuring analog and digital pixels on a 10 micrometer pitch. The design and preliminary results on the analog section of a second prototype manufactured in the OKI 0.20 micrometer FD-SOI process are briefly discussed.
In this paper, we describe the development of monolithic pixel detectors by using a Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology for X-ray and charged particle applications. The detectors are based on a 0.2 μm CMOS fully depleted SOI process (Lapis Semiconductor Co., Ltd). The SOI wafer consists of a thick high-resistivity substrate for sensing and a thin low resistivity Si layer for CMOS circuits. We developed the integration-type SOI pixel detector, INTPIX4 mainly for X-ray imaging; it is made of a Float Zone (FZ) or Czochralski (Cz) silicon wafer. Since 2005, Cz SOI detectors were used initially. …
An improved SOI-MAPS (Silicon On Insulator Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor) for ionizing radiation based on thick-film High Voltage SOI technology (HV-SOI) has been developed. Similar to existing Fully Depleted SOI-based (FD-SOI) MAPS, a buried silicon oxide inter-dielectric (BOX) layer is used to separate the CMOS electronics from the handle wafer which is used as a depleted charge collection layer. FD-SOI MAPS suffer from radiation damage such as transistor threshold voltage shifts due to charge traps in the oxide layers and charge states created at the silicon oxide boundaries (back gate eff…
This work presents the design of BUSARD, an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for the detection of ionizing particles. The ASIC is a monolithic active pixel sensor which has been fabricated in a High-Voltage Silicon-On-Insulator (HV-SOI) process that allows the fabrication of a buried N+ diffusion below the Buried OXide (BOX) as a standard processing step. The first version of the chip, BUSARD-A, takes advantage of this buried diffusion as an ionizing particle sensor. It includes a small array of 13$\times$13 pixels, with a pitch of $80\,μ$m, and each pixel has one buried diffusio…
SOI (Silicon-On-Insulator) pixel sensor is promising technology for developing the high position resolution detector by integrating the small pixels and circuits in the monolithic way. The event driven (trigger mode) SOI based pixel sensor has also been developed for the application of X-ray astronomy with the purpose of reducing the noise using anti-coincidence event. This trigger mode SOI pixel sensor working with in the rate of kilo Hz is also a promising scatter detector for advanced Compton imaging to track the Compton recoiled electrons.
We are developing monolithic pixel sensors based on a 0.2 $μ$m fully-depleted Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology for HEP experiment applications. The total ionizing dose (TID) effect is the major issue in the applications for hard radiation environments in HEP experiments. To compensate for TID damage, we have introduced a Double SOI structure which has a Middle Silicon layer (SOI2 layer) in addition. We studied the recovery from TID damage induced by $\mathrm{^{60}Co}~γ$'s and other characteristics of an Integration-type Double SOI sensor. The Double SOI sensor irradiated to 100 kGy showed…
We are developing monolithic pixel detectors based on SOI technology for high energy physics, X-ray applications and so on.To employ SOI pixel detector on such radiation environments, we have to solve effects of total ionizing dose (TID) for transistors which are enclosed in oxide layer.The holes which are generated and trapped in the oxide layers after irradiation affect characteristics of near-by transistors due to its positive electric field.Annealing and radiation of ultraviolet are not realistic to remove trapped holes for a fabricated detector due to thermal resistance of components and …
We are now developing new X-ray imaging system by using Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) Pixel Detectors. The SOI detector is a monolithic radiation imaging detector based on a 0.2um FD-SOI CMOS process. Special additional process steps are also developed to create fully depleted sensing region of 50~500um thick. SOI detector has up to mega pixels, so development of high speed Data Acquisition (DAQ) system is very important in conducting experiments. We have developed readout board named SEABAS2 (Soi EvAluation BoArd with Sitcp 2) for SOI detector. The SEABAS2 board has 16 channels of 65 MSPS ADCs, …
The experiment of the future electron-positron colliders has unprecedented requirements on the vertex resolution, such as around 3micron single point resolution for the inner most detector layer, with fast readout, and very low power-consumption density and material budget. Significant efforts have been put into the development of monolithic silicon pixel sensors, but there have been some challenges to combine all those stringent specifications in a small pixel area. This paper presents a compact prototype pixel sensor fabricated in LAPIS 200nm SOI process and focuses on the characterization o…
This paper presents the design of a new monolithic Silicon-On-Insulator pixel sensor in $200~nm$ SOI CMOS technology. The main application of the proposed pixel detector is the spectroscopy, but it can also be used for the minimum ionizing particle (MIP) tracking in particle physics experiments. For this reason few different versions of pixel cells are developed: a source-follower based pixel for tracking, a low noise pixel with preamplifier for spectroscopy, and a self-triggering pixel for time and amplitude measurements. In addition the design of a Successive Approximation Register Analog-to…
We developed a beam telescope system comprising five layers of 300-$μ$m-thick INTPIX4NA monolithic pixel sensors with each pixel size of 17 $μ$m square. The sensors were fabricated using silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology. The signal-to-noise ratio of 140--230 is realized at a bias voltage of 20~V. The tracker system was tested using a positron beam of 200--822 MeV/c, and various tracking methods are examined to optimize spatial precision achievable at these energies. The best tracking precision including the precision of the sensor under test itself is 11.04 $\pm$ 0.10 $μ$m for 822-MeV/c p…
We have been developing monolithic active pixel sensors, known as Kyoto's X-ray SOIPIXs, based on the CMOS SOI (silicon-on-insulator) technology for next-generation X-ray astronomy satellites. The event trigger output function implemented in each pixel offers microsecond time resolution and enables reduction of the non-X-ray background that dominates the high X-ray energy band above 5--10 keV. A fully depleted SOI with a thick depletion layer and back illumination offers wide band coverage of 0.3--40 keV. Here, we report recent progress in the X-ray SOIPIX development. In this study, we achiev…
We have been developing monolithic active pixel sensors for X-rays based on the silicon-on-insulator technology. Our device consists of a low-resistivity Si layer for readout CMOS electronics, a high-resistivity Si sensor layer, and a SiO$_2$ layer between them. This configuration allows us both high-speed readout circuits and a thick (on the order of $100~μ{\rm m}$) depletion layer in a monolithic device. Each pixel circuit contains a trigger output function, with which we can achieve a time resolution of $\lesssim 10~μ{\rm s}$. One of our key development items is improvement of the energy re…
We have been developing monolithic active pixel sensors, named ``XRPIX'', based on the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) pixel technology for future X-ray astronomy satellites. XRPIX has the function of event trigger and hit address outputs. This function allows us to read out analog signals only of hit pixels on trigger timing, which is referred to as the event-driven readout mode. Recently, we processed ``XRPIX5b'' with the largest imaging area of 21.9~mm $\times$ 13.8~mm in the XRPIX series. X-ray spectra are successfully obtained from all the pixels, and the readout noise is 46~e$^-$~(rms) in the…
We have been developing the SOI pixel detector ``INTPIX'' for space use and general purpose applications such as the residual stress measurement of a rail and high energy physics experiments. INTPIX is a monolithic pixel detector composed of a high-resistivity Si sensor, a SiO2 insulator, and CMOS pixel circuits utilizing Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) technology. We have considered the possibility of using INTPIX to observe X-ray polarization in space. When the semiconductor detector is used in space, it is subject to radiation damage resulting from high-energy protons. Therefore, it is necessary…
We have been developing monolithic active pixel sensors, X-ray Astronomy SOI pixel sensors, XRPIXs, based on a Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) CMOS technology as soft X-ray sensors for a future Japanese mission, FORCE (Focusing On Relativistic universe and Cosmic Evolution). The mission is characterized by broadband (1-80 keV) X-ray imaging spectroscopy with high angular resolution ($<15$~arcsec), with which we can achieve about ten times higher sensitivity in comparison to the previous missions above 10~keV. Immediate readout of only those pixels hit by an X-ray is available by an event trigger ou…
