Monolithic active pixel sensors (MAPS) are now well established as a technology for tracking charged particles, especially when low material budget is desirable. For such applications, sensors focus on spatial resolution and pixels with digital output or modest charge measurement ability are well suited. Within the European Union STRONG-2020 project, which focuses on experiments using hadrons, the TIIMM (Tracking and Ions Identifications with Minimal Material budget) joint research activity intends to expand granular MAPS capacity to energy-loss (ΔE) measurement for ion species identification. The TIIMM prototypes are developed in the Tower Jazz 180 nm CMOS image sensor (CIS) process. The Time-Over-Threshold (ToT) method is applied to the sensor for the energy-loss measurement. The main design details and the preliminary test results from laboratory measurements of the initial TIIMM prototype are presented in this work.
CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) were chosen as sensor technology for the vertex detectors of STAR, CBM and the upgraded ALICE-ITS. They also constitute a valuable option for tracking devices at future e+e- colliders. Those applications require a substantial tolerance to both, ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. To allow for a focused optimization of the radiation tolerance, prototypes are tested by irradiating the devices either with purely ionizing radiation (e.g. soft X-rays) or the most pure sources of non-ionizing radiation available (e.g. reactor neutrons). In the second case…
The radiation response of a 0.25 um silicon-on-sapphire CMOS technology is characterized at the transistor and circuit levels utilizing both standard and enclosed layout devices. Device-level characterization showed threshold voltage change of less than 170 mV and leakage current change of less than 1 nA for individual nMOSFET and pMOSFET devices at a total dose of 100 krad(SiO2). The increase in power supply current at the circuit level was less than 5%, consistent with the small change in off-state transistor leakage current. The technology exhibits good characteristics for use in the electr…
We report on the effects of ionizing radiation on 65nm CMOS transistors held at approximately -20C during irradiation. The pattern of damage observed after a total dose of 1 Grad is similar to damage reported in room temperature exposures, but we observe less damage than was observed at room temperature.
Pixel sensors using 8" CMOS processing technology have been designed and characterized offering the benefits of industrial sensor fabrication, including large wafers, high throughput and yield, as well as low cost. The pixel sensors are produced using a 150 nm CMOS technology offered by LFoundry in Avezzano. The technology provides multiple metal and polysilicon layers, as well as metal-insulator-metal capacitors that can be employed for AC-coupling and redistribution layers. Several prototypes were fabricated and are characterized with minimum ionizing particles before and after irradiation t…
Within the EUDET consortium a high resolution pixel beam telescope is being developed. The telescope consists of up to six planes of monolithic active pixel sensors. A flexible data acquisition environment is available for the telescope and the system is equipped with all the required infrastructure. Since the first installation of a demonstrator telescope in 2007, it has been extensively tested and used by various detector R&D groups. The results of test beam measurements are described here, demonstrating the telescope performance.
CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (CPS) are ultra-light and highly granular silicon pixel detectors suited for highly sensitive charged particle tracking. Being manufactured with cost efficient standard CMOS processes, CPS may integrate sensing elements together with analogue and digital data processing circuits into one monolithic chip. This turns into $50~\rm μm$ thin sensors, which provide an outstanding typical spatial resolution of few $~\rm μm$ and a detection efficiency for minimum ionizing particles above $99.9\%$. The radiation tolerance of CPS was initially constrained by the limi…
The CLIC Tracker Detector (CLICTD) is a monolithic pixel sensor featuring pixels of 30um x 37.5um and a small collection diode. The sensor is fabricated in a 180 nm CMOS imaging process, using two different pixel flavours: the first with a continuous n-type implant for full lateral depletion, and the second with a segmentation in the n-type implant for accelerated charge collection. Moreover, CLICTD features an innovative sub-pixel segmentation scheme that allows the digital footprint to be reduced while maintaining a small sub-pixel pitch. In this contribution, test-beam measurements for the …
High Energy Particle Physics experiments at the LHC use hybrid silicon detectors, in both pixel and strip geometry, for their inner trackers. These detectors have proven to be very reliable and performant. Nevertheless, there is great interest in the development of depleted CMOS silicon detectors, which could achieve similar performances at lower cost of production and complexity. We present recent developments of this technology in the framework of the ATLAS CMOS demonstrator project. In particular, studies of two active sensors from LFoundry, CCPD_LF and LFCPIX, and the first fully monolithi…
CMOS Pixel Sensors are making steady progress towards the specifications of the ILD vertex detector. Recent developments are summarised, which show that these devices are close to comply with all major requirements, in particular the read-out speed needed to cope with the beam related background. This achievement is grounded on the double- sided ladder concept, which allows combining signals generated by a single particle in two different sensors, one devoted to spatial resolution and the other to time stamp, both assembled on the same mechanical support. The status of the development is overv…
Deep sub micron HV-CMOS processes offer the opportunity for sensors built by industry standard techniques while being HV tolerant, making them good candidates for drift-based, fast collecting, thus radiation-hard pixel detectors. For the upgrade of the ATLAS Pixel Detector towards the HL-LHC requirements, active pixel sensors in HV-CMOS technology were investigated. These implement amplifier and discriminator stages directly in insulating deep n-wells, which also act as collecting electrodes. The deep n-wells allow for bias voltages up to 150V leading to a depletion depth of several 10um. Prot…
The use of CMOS Pixel Sensors (CPS) for high resolution and low material vertex detectors has been validated with the 2014 and 2015 physics runs of the STAR-PXL detector at RHIC/BNL. This opens the door to the use of CPS for inner tracking devices, with 10-100 times larger sensitive area, which require therefore a sensor design privileging power saving, response uniformity and robustness. The 350 nm CMOS technology used for the STAR-PXL sensors was considered as too poorly suited to upcoming applications like the upgraded ALICE Inner Tracking System (ITS), which requires sensors with one order…
Swift, high resolution CMOS pixel sensors are being developed for the ILC vertex detector, aiming to allow approaching the interaction point very closely. A major issue is the time resolution of the sensors needed to deal with the high occupancy generated by the beam related background. A 128x576 pixel sensor providing digitised outputs at a read-out time of 92.5 us, was fabricated in 2008 within the EU project EUDET, and tested with charged particles at the CERN-SPS. Its prominent performances in terms of noise, detection efficiency versus fake hit rate, spatial resolution and radiation toler…
A prototype of a Si-W EM calorimeter was built with Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors as the active elements. With a pixelsize of 30 $μ$m it allows digital calorimetry, i.e. the particles' energy is determined by counting pixels, not by measuring the energy deposited. Although of modest size, with a width of only four Moliere radii, it has 39 million pixels. We describe the construction and tuning of the prototype and present results from beam tests and compare them with predictions of GEANT-based Monte Carlo simulations. We show the shape of showers caused by electrons in unprecedented detail. …
Both the current upgrades to accelerator-based HEP detectors (e.g. ATLAS, CMS) and also future projects (e.g. CEPC, FCC) feature large-area silicon-based tracking detectors. We are investigating the feasibility of using CMOS foundries to fabricate silicon radiation detectors, both for pixels and for large-area strip sensors. A successful proof of concept would open the market potential of CMOS foundries to the HEP community, which would be most beneficial in terms of availability, throughput and cost. In addition, the availability of multi-layer routing of signals will provide the freedom to o…
Monolithic active pixel sensors produced in High Voltage CMOS (HV-CMOS) technology are being considered for High Energy Physics applications due to the ease of production and the reduced costs. Such technology is especially appealing when large areas to be covered and material budget are concerned. This is the case of the outermost pixel layers of the future ATLAS tracking detector for the HL-LHC. For experiments at hadron colliders, radiation hardness is a key requirement which is not fulfilled by standard CMOS sensor designs that collect charge by diffusion. This issue has been addressed by …
CMOS pixel sensors (CPS) represent a novel technological approach to building charged particle detectors. CMOS processes allow to integrate a sensing volume and readout electronics in a single silicon die allowing to build sensors with a small pixel pitch ($\sim 20 μm$) and low material budget ($\sim 0.2-0.3\% X_0$) per layer. These characteristics make CPS an attractive option for vertexing and tracking systems of high energy physics experiments. Moreover, thanks to the mass production industrial CMOS processes used for the manufacturing of CPS the fabrication construction cost can be signifi…
An upgrade of the ATLAS experiment for the High Luminosity phase of LHC is planned for 2024 and foresees the replacement of the present Inner Detector (ID) with a new Inner Tracker (ITk) completely made of silicon devices. Depleted active pixel sensors built with the High Voltage CMOS (HV-CMOS) technology are investigated as an option to cover large areas in the outermost layers of the pixel detector and are especially interesting for the development of monolithic devices which will reduce the production costs and the material budget with respect to the present hybrid assemblies. For this purp…
CMOS sensors were successfully implemented in the STAR tracker [1]. LHC experiments have shown that efficient b tagging, reconstruction of displaced vertices and identification of disappearing tracks are necessary. An improved vertex detector is justified for the ILC. To achieve a point(spatial single layer) resolution below the one-μm range while improving other characteristics (radiation tolerance and eventually time resolution) we will need the use of 1-micron pitch pixels. Therefore, we propose a single MOS transistor that acts as an amplifying device and a detector with a buried charge-co…
A CMOS pixel sensor, named Supix-1, is developed for a pixelated silicon tracker for the Circular Electron-Positron Collider (CEPC) project. The sensor, consisted of nine sectors varying in pixel sizes, diode sizes and geometries, is fabricated with a 180 nm CMOS Image Sensor (CIS) process to study the particle detection performance of enlarged pixels. In this work, the radiation-induced effects on the charge collection of the sensor under the fluence of 1 $\times$ 10^13 1 MeV neq/cm^2 are studied by the measurements with the radioactive source of Fe-55 and the Technology Computer Aided Design…
This work presents a depleted monolithic active pixel sensor (DMAPS) prototype manufactured in the LFoundry 150 nm CMOS process. The described device, named LF-Monopix, was designed as a proof of concept of a fully monolithic sensor capable of operating in the environment of outer layers of the ATLAS Inner Tracker upgrade for the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). Implementing such a device in the detector module will result in a lower production cost and lower material budget compared to the presently used hybrid designs. In this paper the chip architecture will be described foll…
CMOS Pixel Sensors tend to become relevant for a growing spectrum of charged particle detection instruments. This comes mainly from their high granularity and low material budget. However, several potential applications require a higher read-out speed and radiation tolerance than those achieved with available devices based on a 0.35 micrometers feature size technology. This paper shows preliminary test results of new prototype sensors manufactured in a 0.18 micrometers process based on a high resistivity epitaxial layer of sizeable thickness. Grounded on these observed performances, we discuss…
The CLIC Tracker Detector (CLICTD) is a monolithic pixelated sensor chip produced in a $180$ nm imaging CMOS process built on a high-resistivity epitaxial layer. The chip, designed in the context of the CLIC tracking detector study, comprises a matrix of ${16\times128}$ elongated pixels, each measuring ${300\times30}$ $μ$m$^2$. To ensure prompt charge collection, every elongated pixel is segmented in eight sub-pixels, each containing a collection diode and a separate analog front-end. A simultaneous $8$-bit time measurement with $10$ ns time bins and $5$-bit energy measurement with programmabl…
Purpose: CMOS pixel sensors have become extremely attractive for future high performance tracking devices. Initial R\&D work has been conducted for the vertex detector for the proposed Circular Electron Positron Collider that will allow precision Higgs measurements. It is critical to achieve low power consumption to minimize the material budget. This requires careful optimization of the sensor diode geometry to reach high charge-over-capacitance that allows reduction in analog power consumption. Methods: The electrode area and footprint are two critical elements in sensor diode geometry and ha…
This paper presents the design and results of detailed tests of a CMOS active pixel chip for charged particle detection with in-pixel charge storage for correlated double sampling and readout in rolling shutter mode at frequencies up to 25 MHz. This detector is developed in the framework of R&D for the Vertex Tracker for a future e+e- Linear Collider.
This paper reports results on a detailed study of charge collection and signal-to-noise performance of CMOS monolithic pixel sensors before and after back-thinning and their application in a pixel beam telescope for the ALS 1.5 GeV $e^-$ beam test facility.
The Pixel 2010 conference focused on semiconductor pixel detectors for particle tracking/vertexing as well as for imaging, in particular for synchrotron light sources and XFELs. The big LHC hybrid pixel detectors have impressively started showing their capabilities. X-ray imaging detectors, also using the hybrid pixel technology, have greatly advanced the experimental possibilities for diiffraction experiments. Monolithic or semi-monolithic devices like CMOS active pixels and DEPFET pixels have now reached a state such that complete vertex detectors for RHIC and superKEKB are being built with …
An R&D program on monolithic CMOS pixel sensors for application at the ILC has been started at LBNL. This program profits of significant synergies with other R&D activities on CMOS pixel sensors. The project activities after the first semester of the R&D program are reviewed.
This paper presents the design and results of detailed tests of a CMOS active pixel chip for charged particle detection with in-pixel charge storage for correlated double sampling and readout in rolling shutter mode at frequencies up to 25 MHz. This detector is developed in the framework of R&D for the Vertex Tracker for the International Linear Collider.
Depleted Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor (DMAPS) prototypes developed in the TowerJazz 180 nm CMOS imaging process have been designed in the context of the ATLAS upgrade Phase-II at the HL-LHC. The pixel sensors are characterized by a small collection electrode (3 $μ$m) to minimize capacitance, a small pixel size ($36.4\times 36.4$ $μ$m), and are produced on high resistivity epitaxial p-type silicon. The design targets a radiation hardness of $1\times10^{15}$ 1 MeV n$_{eq}$/cm$^{2}$, compatible with the outermost layer of the ATLAS ITK Pixel detector. This paper presents the results from charac…
A cluster imaging technique for Transmission Electron Microscopy with a direct detection CMOS pixel sensor is presented. Charge centre-of-gravity reconstruction for individual electron clusters improves the spatial resolution and thus the point spread function. Data collected with a CMOS sensor with 9.5 micron pixels show an improvement of a factor of two in point spread function to 2.7 micron at 300 keV and of a factor of three in the image contrast, compared to traditional bright field illumination.
- Paper withdrawn by the author - CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors for charged particle tracking are considered as technology for numerous experiments in heavy ion and particle physics. To match the requirements for those applications in terms of tolerance to non-ionizing radiation, it is being tried to deplete the sensitive volume of the, traditionally non-depleted, silicon sensors. We study the feasibility of this approach for the common case that the collection diodes of the pixel are small as compared to the pixel pitch. An analytic equation predicting the thickness of the depletion de…
A prototype of the CMOS pixel sensor named SUPIX-1 has been fabricated and tested in order to investigate the feasibility of a pixelated tracker for a proposed Higgs factory, namely, the Circular Electron-Positron Collider (CEPC). The sensor, taped out with a 180 nm CMOS Image Sensor (CIS) process, consists of nine different pixel arrays varying in pixel pitches, diode sizes and geometries in order to study the particle detection performance of enlarged pixels. The test was carried out with a Fe-55 radioactive source. Two soft X-ray peaks observed were used to calibrate the charge to voltage f…
The Skipper CCD-in-CMOS Parallel Read-Out Circuit (SPROCKET) is a mixed-signal front-end design for the readout of Skipper CCD-in-CMOS image sensors. SPROCKET is fabricated in a 65 nm CMOS process and each pixel occupies a 50$μ$m $\times$ 50$μ$m footprint. SPROCKET is intended to be heterogeneously integrated with a Skipper-in-CMOS sensor array, such that one readout pixel is connected to a multiplexed array of nine Skipper-in-CMOS pixels to enable massively parallel readout. The front-end includes a variable gain preamplifier, a correlated double sampling circuit, and a 10-bit serial successi…
This paper presents the results of a study of the response of a test CMOS sensor with a radiation tolerant pixel cell design to 80 keV and 100 keV electrons. The point spread function is measured to be (13.0+/- 1.7) microns at 100 keV and (12.1 +/- 1.6) microns at 80 keV, for 20 micron pixels. Results agree well with values predicted by a Geant-4 and dedicated charge collection simulation.
This paper reviews the development of CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) for future vertex detectors. MAPS are developed in a standard CMOS technology. In the imaging field, where the technology found its first applications, they are also known as CMOS Image Sensors. The use of MAPS as a detector for particle physics was first proposed at the end of 1999. Since then, their good performance in terms of spatial resolution, efficiency, radiation hardness have been demonstrated and work is now well under way to deliver the first MAPS-based vertex detectors.
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…
The upgrade to the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider will pose unprecedented challenges to the tracking systems of all experiments. Recent advancement of active pixel detectors designed in CMOS processes provide attractive alternatives to the well-established hybrid design using passive sensors. This article presents studies with a high-voltage CMOS active pixel sensor designed for the ATLAS tracker upgrade. The sensor is glued to the read-out chip of the Insertable B-Layer. The device under test is structured in smaller pixels than those of the attached read-out chip with information on t…
The apparatus of the ALICE experiment at CERN will be upgraded in 2017/18 during the second long shutdown of the LHC (LS2). A major motivation for this upgrade is to extend the physics reach for charmed and beauty particles down to low transverse momenta. This requires a substantial improvement of the spatial resolution and the data rate capability of the ALICE Inner Tracking System (ITS). To achieve this goal, the new ITS will be equipped with 50 um thin CMOS Pixel Sensors (CPS) covering either the 3 innermost layers or all the 7 layers of the detector. The CPS being developed for the ITS upg…
The CERN-RD50 CMOS working group develops the RD50-MPWseries of monolithic high-voltage CMOS pixel sensors for potential use in future high luminosity experiments such as the HL-LHC and FCC-hh. In this contribution, the design of the latest prototype in this series, RD50-MPW3, is presented. An overview of its pixel matrix and digital readout periphery is given, with discussion of the new structures implemented in the chip and the problems they aim to solve. The main analog and digital features of the sensor are already tested and initial laboratory characterisation of the chip is presented.
Monolithic CMOS pixel sensors offer unprecedented opportunities for fast nano-imaging through direct electron detection in transmission electron microscopy. We present the design and a full characterisation of a CMOS pixel test structure able to withstand doses in excess of 1 MRad. Data collected with electron beams at various energies of interest in electron microscopy are compared to predictions of simulation and to 1.5 GeV electron data to disentagle the effect of multiple scattering. The point spread function measured with 300 keV electrons is (8.1 +/- 1.6) micron for 10 micron pixel and (…
We present a readout chip prototype for future pixel detectors with timing capabilities. The prototype is intended for characterizing 4D pixel arrays with a pixel size of $100\times100~μ\text{m}^2$, where the sensors are Low Gain Avalanche Diodes (LGADs). The long-term focus is towards a possible replacement of disks in the extended forward pixel system (TEPX) of the CMS experiment during the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). The requirements for this ASIC are the incorporation of a Time to Digital Converter (TDC) within each pixel, low power consumption, and radiation tolerance up to $5\times10^{…
We present results of a study of charged particle track and vertex reconstruction with a beam telescope made of four layers of 50 micron-thin CMOS monolithic pixel sensors using the 120 GeV protons at the FNAL Meson Test Beam Facility. We compare our results to the performance requirements of a future e+e- linear collider in terms of particle track extrapolation and vertex reconstruction accuracies.
The CLIC Tracker Detector (CLICTD) is a monolithic pixel sensor. It is fabricated in a 180 nm CMOS imaging process, modified with an additional deep low-dose n-type implant to obtain full lateral depletion. The sensor features a small collection diode, which is essential for achieving a low input capacitance. The CLICTD sensor was designed as a technology demonstrator in the context of the tracking detector studies for the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC). Its design characteristics are of broad interest beyond CLIC, for HL-LHC tracking detector upgrades. It is produced in two different pixel fl…
CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) are proposed as a technology for various vertex detectors in nuclear and particle physics. We discuss the mechanisms of ionizing radiation damage on MAPS hosting the the dead time free, so-called self bias pixel. Moreover, we discuss radiation hardened sensor designs which allow operating detectors after exposing them to irradiation doses above 1 Mrad
The Belle II experiment, located at the SuperKEKB collider at the high-energy research facility KEK in Tsukuba, Japan, started operation in 2018. Compared to the predecessor experiment Belle, Belle II plans to increase the peak luminosity by a factor of about 40, by employing nano-beam technology in the interaction region. In particular the new, innermost sub-detector of Belle II - the Pixel Vertex Detector (PXD) - is in close proximity to the interaction point. This allows for the detection of particles, which do not leave a signal in the outer sub-detectors. Among these, Highly Ionizing Part…
Hybrid pixel detectors have been invented for the LHC to make tracking and vertexing possible at all in LHC's radiation intense environment. The LHC pixel detectors have meanwhile very successfully fulfilled their promises and R\&D for the planned HL-LHC upgrade is in full swing, targeting even higher ionising doses and non-ionising fluences. In terms of rate and radiation tolerance hybrid pixels are unrivaled. But they have disadvantages as well, most notably material thickness, production complexity, and cost. Meanwhile also active pixel sensors (DEPFET, MAPS) have become real pixel detector…
CLICTD is a monolithic silicon pixel sensor fabricated in a modified 180 nm CMOS imaging process with a small collection electrode design and a high-resistivity epitaxial layer. It features an innovative sub-pixel segmentation scheme and is optimised for fast charge collection and high spatial resolution. The sensor was developed to target the requirements for the tracking detector of the proposed future Compact Linear Collider (CLIC). Most notably, a temporal resolution of a few nanoseconds and a spatial resolution below 7 microns are demanded. In this contribution, the sensor performance mea…
We are investigating the feasibility of using CMOS foundries to fabricate silicon detectors, both for pixels and for large-area strip sensors. The availability of multi-layer routing will provide the freedom to optimize the sensor geometry and the performance, with biasing structures in poly-silicon layers and MIM-capacitors allowing for AC coupling. A prototyping production of strip test-structures and RD53A compatible pixel sensors was recently completed at LFoundry in a 150$\,$nm CMOS process. This paper will focus on the characterization of irradiated and non-irradiated pixel modules, comp…
We report the design and characterization of a CMOS pixel direct charge sensor, Topmetal-II-, fabricated in a standard 0.35um CMOS Integrated Circuit process. The sensor utilizes exposed metal patches on top of each pixel to directly collect charge. Each pixel contains a low-noise charge-sensitive preamplifier to establish the analog signal and a discriminator with tunable threshold to generate hits. The analog signal from each pixel is accessible through time-shared multiplexing over the entire array. Hits are read out digitally through a column-based priority logic structure. Tests show that…
CMOS pixel sensors with a small collection electrode combine the advantages of a small sensor capacitance with the advantages of a fully monolithic design. The small sensor capacitance results in a large ratio of signal-to-noise and a low analogue power consumption, while the monolithic design reduces the material budget, cost and production effort. However, the low electric field in the pixel corners of such sensors results in an increased charge collection time, that makes a fully efficient operation after irradiation and a timing resolution in the order of nanoseconds challenging for pixel …
Active pixel sensors based on the High-Voltage CMOS technology are being investigated as a viable option for the future pixel tracker of the ATLAS experiment at the High-Luminosity LHC. This paper reports on the testbeam measurements performed at the H8 beamline of the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron on a High-Voltage CMOS sensor prototype produced in 180 nm AMS technology. Results in terms of tracking efficiency and timing performance, for different threshold and bias conditions, are shown.
A small drift chamber was read out by means of a MediPix2 readout chip as direct anode. A Micromegas foil was placed 50 $μ$m above the chip, and electron multiplication occurred in the gap. With a He/Isobutane 80/20 mixture, gas multiplication factors up to tens of thousands were achieved, resulting in an efficiency for detecting single electrons of better than 90% . We recorded many frames containing 2D images with tracks from cosmic muons. Along these tracks, electron clusters were observed, as well as delta-rays.
