The avalanche breakdown and Geiger mode of the silicon p-n junction is considered. A precise physically motivated method is proposed for determining the avalanche breakdown voltage of silicon photomultipliers (Si PM). The method is based on measuring the dependence of the relative photon detection efficiency (PDErel ) on the bias voltage when one type of carriers (electron or hole) is injected into the avalanche multiplication zone of the p-n junction. The injection of electrons or holes from the base region of the Si PM semiconductor structure is performed using short-wave or long-wave light. At a low overvoltage (1-2 V) the detection efficiency is linearly dependent on the bias voltage; therefore, extrapolation to zero PDErel value determines the Si PM avalanche breakdown voltage with an accuracy within a few millivolts.
A novel concept for ion blocking in gas-avalanche detectors was developed, comprising cascaded micro-hole electron multipliers with patterned electrodes for ion defocusing. This leads to ion blocking at the 10^{-4} level, in DC mode, in operation conditions adequate for TPCs and for gaseous photomultipliers. The concept was validated in a cascaded visible-sensitive gas avalanche photomultiplier operating at atmospheric pressure of Ar/CH_{4} (95/5) with a bi-alkali photocathode. While in previous works high gain, in excess of 10^{5}, was reached only in a pulse-gated cascaded-GEM gaseous photom…
The operation of visible-sensitive gaseous- and, to some extent, vacuum-photomultipliers is critically affected by secondary electrons originating from ion impact on the photocathode. A simple method for indirect measurement of the effective ion-induced secondary-electron emission (IISEE) coefficient from the photocathode into a gas medium, $γ_+^{eff}$ was developed. The experimental results with visible-sensitive K-Cs-Sb, Na-K-Sb and Cs-Sb photocathodes, yielded $γ_+^{eff}$ - values between 0.02 and 0.03 in Ar/CH$_{4}$ (95/5) at 700 mbar; these are in good agreement with theoretical calculati…
The Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) is a mature photodetector concept that is applied in a variety of applications ranging from medical imaging to automotive LiDAR systems. Over the last few years, improvements of the sensor performance are gradually approaching to a saturation. In this work we present our new concept to overcome the intrinsic limitations of planar configurations of electrodes. Our non-planar technology is based on focusing and enhancing the electric fields by tip-like electrodes. The shape of the electric field and the lack of typical micro-cell edges, allows us to exclude cel…
We report the results of a characterization study of several types of cryogenic photomultipliers manufactured by Hamamatsu Photonics and intended for operation in liquid Ar conditions, namely: compact 2-inch R6041-506MOD tubes, 3-inch R11065-10 and R11065-MOD tubes for operation in liquid Ar and 3-inch R11410-20 tubes originally designed for operation in liquid Xe. These types of PMT are proposed for installation into the future two-phase cryogenic avalanche detector that is developed in the Laboratory of Cosmology and Particle Physics of the Novosibirsk State University jointly with the Budke…
In this paper I want to review the current status of development of multi-pixel silicon-based avalanche photo-diodes operated in Geiger mode, also known as Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM). Particular emphasis is given to the application of this type of photo-sensors in high energy physics detectors.
In order to build a new concept of photomultiplier based on silicon technology, design and characterization of 5x5 arrays of a new generation of single photon avalanche diodes (SPAD) manufactured by ST-Microelectronics have been performed. Single photons sensitivity, dark noise and timing resolution of the SPAD- STM devices in several experimental conditions have been evaluated. Moreover, the effects arising from the multiple integration of many elements and the study of their common read-out have been deeply investigated.
We present characterization results of two silicon photomultipliers; the Hamamatsu LVR-6050-CN and the Ketek PM3325 WB. With our measurements of the bias dependence of the breakdown probability we are able to draw conclusions about the location and spatial extension of the avalanche region. For the KETEK SiPM we find that the avalanche region is located close to the surface. In the Hamamatsu SiPM the high-field region is located $0.5\,μ$m below the surface, while the volume above is depleted almost until the surface. Furthermore, for the Hamamatsu SiPM we find that charge carriers produced by …
This paper proposes an automatic procedure, based on ROOT data Analysis Framework, for the analysis of Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM) characteristics. In particular, it can be used to analyze experimental waveforms, from oscilloscope, containing SiPM pulses acquired at different temperatures and bias voltages. Important SiPMs characteristics such as: charge distribution, gain, breakdown voltage, pulse shape (rise time and recovery time) and overvoltage can been calculated. Developed procedure can be easily used to analyze any type of SiPM detectors.
PIXELATED geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes(PPDs), often called silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are emerging as an excellent replacement for traditional photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) in a variety of detectors, especially those for subatomic physics experiments, which requires extensive test and operation procedures in order to achieve uniform responses from all the devices. In this paper, we show for two PPD brands, Hamamatsu MPPC and SensL SPM, that the dark noise rate, breakdown voltage and rate of correlated avalanches can be inferred from the sole measure of dark current as a function of o…
A Silicon Photomultiplier, SiPM, is a metasystem of Avalanche Photodiodes, APDs, which embedded in a specific purpose electronic, becomes a metadevice with unique and useful advanced functionalities to capture, transmit and analyze information with increased efficiency and security. The SiPM is a very small state of the art photo-detector with very high efficiency and sensitivity, with good response to controlled light pulses in the presence of background light without saturation. New results profit of such metadevice to propose a new receiver-emitter system useful for Visible Light Communicat…
A novel photon detector, the Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM), has been tested in proximity focusing Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) counters that were exposed to cosmic-ray particles in Ljubljana, and a 2 GeV electron beam at the KEK research facility. This type of RICH detector is a candidate for the particle identification detector upgrade of the BELLE detector at the KEK B-factory, for which the use of SiPMs, microchannel plate photomultiplier tubes or hybrid avalanche photodetectors, rather than traditional Photomultiplier Tubes (PMTs) is essential due to the presence of high magnetic fields.…
We give an analytic treatment of the time resolution and efficiency of Single Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs) and Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). We provide closed-form expressions for structures with uniform electric fields and efficient numerical prescriptions for arbitrary electric field configurations. We discuss the sensor performance for single photon detection and also for charged particle detection.
Avalanche photodiode (APD) has been intensively investigated as a promising candidate to replace photomultiplier tubes (PMT) for weak light detection. However, in conventional APDs, a large portion of carrier energy drawn from the electric field is thermalized, and the multiplication efficiencies of electron and hole are low and close. In order to achieve high gain, the device should work under breakdown bias, where carrier multiplication proceeds bi-directionally to form a positive feedback multiplication circle. However, breakdown is hard to control, in practice, APDs should work under Geige…
A detailed and accurate characterisation of silicon photomultiplier detectors is required for a better understanding of the signal and noise in many applications. The collected information is a valuable feedback to the manufacturers in their attempt to improve the performances. In this paper, we provide a detailed description of how to characterise these photo-detectors. The correlated noise probabilities, the important time constants and the photon detection efficiency are obtained with a statistical analysis of pulse-shape and time distributions. The method is tested with different detectors…
The Muon Telescope is a muography experiment for imaging volcanoes in Colombia. It consists of a scintillator tracking system and a water Cherenkov detector used for particle deposited energy measurement. The MuTe operates autonomously in high altitude environments where the temperature gradient reaches up to $10$$^{\circ}$C. In this work, we characterize the breakdown voltage, gain, and noise of the telescope silicon photomultipliers for temperature variations spanning $0$ to $40$$^{\circ}$C. We demonstrated that the discrimination threshold for the MuTe hodoscope must be above 5 pe to avoid …
A new method to determine the breakdown voltage of SiPMs is presented. It is backed up by a DC model which describes the breakdown phenomenon by distinct avalanche turn-on ($V_{01}$) and turn off ($V_{10}$) voltages. It is shown that $V_{01}$ is related to the 'breakdown voltage' that previous DC methods derive from simple reverse current-voltage measurements, while $V_{10}$ is the 'real' breakdown voltage commonly obtained from complex gain-voltage measurements. The proposed method reveals how the microcell population distributes around $V_{01}$ and $V_{10}$. It is found that if this distribu…
We have investigated the effects of X-ray irradiation to doses of 0, 200 Gy, 20 kGy, 2 MGy, and 20 MGy on the Hamamatsu silicon-photomultiplier (SiPM) S10362-11-050C. The SiPMs were irradiated without applied bias voltage. From current-voltage, capacitance/conductance-voltage, -frequency, pulse-shape, and pulse-area measurements, the SiPM characteristics below and above breakdown voltage were determined. Significant changes of some SiPM parameters are observed. Up to a dose of 20 kGy the performance of the SiPMs is hardly affected by X-ray radiation damage. For doses of 2 and 20 MGy the SiPMs …
A silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) array has been developed at FBK-irst having 32 channels and a dimension of 8.0 x 1.1 mm^2. Each 250 um wide channel is subdivided into 5 x 22 rectangularly arranged pixels. These sensors are developed to read out a modular high resolution scintillating fiber tracker. Key properties like breakdown voltage, gain and photon detection efficiency (PDE) are found to be homogeneous over all 32 channels of an SiPM array. This could make scintillating fiber trackers with SiPM array readout a promising alternative to available tracker technologies, if noise properties an…
Silicon photomultipliers present saturation effects as they have a limited number of pixels and work in Geiger mode. Their response to light pulses in the nonlinear region is very complex for two reasons: pixel recharging after an avalanche affects the trigger probability and charge multiplication of subsequent avalanches, and non-trivial effects due to crosstalk and afterpulsing. A parametrization of the nonlinear response of silicon photomultipliers was developed where the above effects were readily accounted for. The model was tested on a setup of gamma-ray spectrometry using different comb…
It is well known that avalanche photodiodes operated in the Geiger mode above the breakdown voltage offer a virtually infinite sensitivity and time accuracy in the picosecond range that can be used for single photon detection. However, their performance in particle detection remains still unexplored. In this contribution, we are going to expose the different steps that we have taken in order to prove the efficiency of Geiger mode avalanche photodiodes in the aforementioned field. In particular, we will present an array of pixels of 1mmx1mm fabricated with a standard CMOS technology for charact…
We are developing a novel high-brightness atomic beam, comprised of a two-body exotic atom called muonium (M $ = μ^+ + e^-$), for next-generation atomic physics and gravitational interaction measurements. This M source originates from a thin sheet of superfluid helium (SFHe), hence diagnostics and later measurements require a detection system which is operational in a dilution cryostat at temperatures below 1 K. In this paper, we describe the operation and characterization of silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) at ultra-low temperatures in SFHe targets. We show the temperature dependence of the s…
Low Gain Avalanche Detectors (LGAD) represent a remarkable advance in high energy particle detection, since they provide a moderate increase (gain ~10) of the collected charge, thus leading to a notable improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio, which largely extends the possible application of Silicon detectors beyond their present working field. The optimum detection performance requires a careful implementation of the multiplication junction, in order to obtain the desired gain on the read out signal, but also a proper design of the edge termination and the peripheral region, which prevents …
Radiation Hardness of Commercially Available NUV-MT Silicon Photomultipliers
University of Hamburg（汉堡大学）；NCSR “Demokritos（德谟克利特国家研究中心）；Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics（核与粒子物理研究所）；School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham（伯明翰大学物理与天文学学院）
This paper describes the characterization of crystal matrices and silicon photomultiplier arrays for a novel Positron Emission Tomography (PET) detector, namely the external plate of the EndoTOFPET-US system. The EndoTOFPET-US collaboration aims to integrate Time-Of-Flight PET with ultrasound endoscopy in a novel multimodal device, capable to support the development of new biomarkers for prostate and pancreatic tumors. The detector consists in two parts: a PET head mounted on an ultrasound probe and an external PET plate. The challenging goal of 1 mm spatial resolution for the PET image requir…
This paper shows the simulation and test results of 50um thick Low Gain Avalanche Detectors (LGAD) sensors designed by the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) and fabricated by the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IME). Three wafers have been produced with four different gain layer implant doses each. Different production processes, including variation in the n++ layer implant energy and carbon co-implantation were used. Test results show that the IHEP-IME sensors with the higher dose of gain layer have lower breakdown voltages and higher gain layer voltage…
In this work we study the performance of silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) light sensors after exposure to the JULIC cyclotron proton beam, of energy $\sim$ 39 MeV, relative to their performance before exposure. The SiPM devices used in this study show a significant change in their behavior and downward shift of their breakdown voltage by as much as $\sim$ 0.4$\pm$0.1 V. Single photon measurements appear to be no longer possible for the SiPMs under study after exposure to a dose of $\sim$ 0.2 Gy (corresponding to an integrated proton flux of $\sim$$ϕ_{p}$=1.06x10$^{8}$ p/cm$^{2}$). No visible dam…
This work illustrates and compares some methods to measure the most relevant parameters of silicon photo-multipliers (\sipm{}s), such as photon detection efficiency as a function of over-voltage and wavelength, dark count rate, optical cross-talk, afterpulse probability. For the measurement of the breakdown voltage, $V_{BD}$, several methods using the current-voltage $IV$ curve are compared, such as the "IV Model", the "relative logarithmic derivative", the "inverse logarithmic derivative", the "second logarithmic derivative", and the "third derivative" models. We also show how some of these c…
The breakdown behaviour of SiPMs (Silicon PhotoMultiplier) with pixel sizes of 15$\times $15, 25$\times $25, 50$\times $50, and 100$\times $100 $μ$m$^2$, manufactured by KETEK, has been investigated. From the current-voltage characteristics measured with and without illumination by LED light of 470 nm wavelength, the current-breakdown voltage, $V_I$, and from linear fits of the voltage dependence of the SiPM gain, measured by recording pulse-area spectra, the gain-breakdown voltage, $V_G$, have been obtained. The voltage dependence of the Geiger-breakdown probability was determined from the fr…
We report about the optical and electrical characterization of three high efficiency and blue sensitive Silicon photomultipliers from FBK, Hamamatsu, and SensL. Key features of the tested devices when operated at 90% breakdown probability are peak photon detection efficiencies between 40% and 55%, temperature dependencies of gain and PDE that are less than 1%/$^{\circ}$C, dark rates of $\sim$50\,kHz/mm$^{2}$ at room temperature, afterpulsing of about 2%, and direct optical crosstalk between 6% and 20%. The characteristics of all three devices impressively demonstrate how the Silicon-photomulti…
We characterized the S14160-3050HS Multi-Pixel Photon Counter (MPPC), a high efficiency, single channel silicon photomultiplier manufactured by Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. All measurements were performed at a room temperature of (23.0 $\pm$ 0.3) $^{\circ}$C. We obtained an I-V curve and used relative derivatives to find a breakdown voltage of 38.88 V. At a 3 V over voltage, we find a dark count rate of 1.08 MHz, crosstalk probability of 21 $\%$, photon detection efficiency of 55 $\%$ at 450 nm, and saturation at 1.0x10$^{11}$ photons per second. The S14160-3050HS MPPC is a candidate detector for …
Motivated by the need for fast timing detectors to withstand up to 2 MGy of ionizing dose at the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, prototype low gain avalanche detectors (LGADs) have been fabricated in single pad configuration, 2x2 arrays, and related p-i-n diodes, and exposed to Co- 60 sources for study. Devices were fabricated with a range of dopant layer concentrations and, for the arrays, a variety of inter-pad distances and distances from the active area to the edge. Measurements of capacitance versus voltage and leakage current versus voltage have been made to compare pre- and post-…
The Mu2e electromagnetic calorimeter has to provide precise information on energy, time and position for $\sim$100 MeV electrons. It is composed of 1348 un-doped CsI crystals, each coupled to two large area Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). A modular and custom SiPM layout consisting of a 3$\times$2 array of 6$\times$6 mm$^2$ UV-extended monolithic SiPMs has been developed to fulfill the Mu2e calorimeter requirements and a pre-production of 150 prototypes has been procured by three international firms (Hamamatsu, SensL and Advansid). A detailed quality assurance process has been carried out on…
Silicon photomultipliers are regarded as a very promising technology for next-generation, cutting-edge detectors for low-background experiments in particle physics. This work presents systematic reflectivity studies of Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM) and other samples in liquid xenon at vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) wavelengths. A dedicated setup at the University of Münster has been used that allows to acquire angle-resolved reflection measurements of various samples immersed in liquid xenon with 0.45° angular resolution. Four samples are investigated in this work: one Hamamatsu VUV4 SiPM, one FBK…
Future tonne-scale liquefied noble gas detectors depend on efficient light detection in the VUV range. In the past years Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) have emerged as a valid alternative to standard photomultiplier tubes or large area avalanche photodiodes. The next generation double beta decay experiment, nEXO, with a 5 tonne liquid xenon time projection chamber, will use SiPMs for detecting the $178\,\text{nm}$ xenon scintillation light, in order to achieve an energy resolution of $σ/ Q_{ββ} = 1\, \%$. This paper presents recent measurements of the VUV-HD generation SiPMs from Fondazione …
Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are highly-sensitive photodetectors emerging as the technology of choice for many applications, including large high-energy physics experiments where they often are exposed to high radiation fluences. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in assessing the performance deterioration of such detectors after the irradiation with proton or neutron, with different fluence levels. In this work, samples of different FBK SiPM technologies, made with different manufacturing technologies, were irradiated at the INFN-LNS facility (Italy) with protons reach…
PySiPMGUI: A Universal Python-Based Software for Photodetector I-V Quality Assurance: From Underground Dark Matter Searches to Astroparticle Cherenkov Cameras
Homi Bhabha National Institute（霍米·巴巴国立研究所）；Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics（萨哈核物理研究所）
