The Multi-Chip-Module-Deposited (MCM-D) technique has been used to build hybrid pixel detector assemblies. This paper summarises the results of an analysis of data obtained in a test beam campaign at CERN. Here, single chip hybrids made of ATLAS pixel prototype read-out electronics and special sensor tiles were used. They were prepared by the Fraunhofer Institut fuer Zuverlaessigkeit und Mikrointegration, IZM, Berlin, Germany. The sensors feature an optimized sensor geometry called equal sized bricked. This design enhances the spatial resolution for double hits in the long direction of the sensor cells.
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 Argonne Pixel Tracking Telescope is installed at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility. The telescope consists of six planar n^{+}-in-n silicon sensors with a pixel size of 250 {\times} 50 μm^{2}. The instrumentation of the telescope is described including the electrical and mechanical setups. A 120 GeV proton beam is used to evaluate the telescope performance using criteria such as the cluster size, pixel tracking efficiency, and spatial resolution. The spatial resolution of the telescope is measured to be 72 μm {\times} 13 μm.
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.
Diamond has been developed as a material for the detection of charged particles by ionization. Its radiation hardness makes it an attractive material for detectors operated in a harsh radiation environment e.g. close to a particle beam as is the case for beam monitoring and for pixel vertex detectors. Poly-crystalline chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond has been studied as strip and pixel detectors so far. We report on a first-time characterization of a single-crystal diamond pixel detector in a 100 GeV particle beam at CERN. The detectors are made from irregularly shaped single crystal se…
The primary secondary particles from the spallation target of the China Spallation Neutron Source are mainly gammas and neutrons, which are related to the distribution of the incident proton. The reconstruction of proton beam spot could be implemented based on the distribution of secondary particles. The methods of pinhole imaging and Compton imaging are developed by measuring the gamma distribution based on the pixelated detector. The secondary gammas could be detected by the pixelated gamma detector directly. The neutron can be identified by detecting the characteristic (478 keV) $γ$-rays fr…
For the purpose of withstanding very high radiation doses, silicon pixel sensors with a 3D electrode geometry are being developed. Detectors of this kind are highly interesting for harch radiation environments such as expected in the High Luminosity LHC, but also for space physics and medical applications. In this paper, prototype sensors developed at SINTEF are presented and results from tests in a pion beam at CERN are given. These tests shows that these 3D sensors perform as expected with full efficiency at bias voltages between 5 and 15V.
New Micromegas (Micro-mesh gaseous detectors) are being developed in view of the future physics projects planned by the COMPASS collaboration at CERN. Several major upgrades compared to present detectors are being studied: detectors standing five times higher luminosity with hadron beams, detection of beam particles (flux up to a few hundred of kHz/mm^2, 10 times larger than for the present detectors) with pixelized read-out in the central part, light and integrated electronics, and improved robustness. Studies were done with the present detectors moved in the beam, and two first pixelized pro…
Detector control systems (DCS) include the read out, control and supervision of hardware devices as well as the monitoring of external systems like cooling system and the processing of control data. The implementation of such a system in the final experiment has also to provide the communication with the trigger and data acquisition system (TDAQ). In addition, conditions data which describe the status of the pixel detector modules and their environment must be logged and stored in a common LHC wide database system. At the combined test beam all ATLAS subdetectors were operated together for the…
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…
Detailed studies of the resolution of a EUDET-type beam telescope are carried out using the DATURA beam telescope as an example. The EUDET-type beam telescopes make use of CMOS MIMOSA 26 pixel detectors for particle tracking allowing for precise characterisation of particle sensing devices. A profound understanding of the performance of the beam telescope as a whole is obtained by a detailed characterisation of the sensors themselves. The differential intrinsic resolution as measured in a MIMOSA 26 sensor is extracted using an iterative pull method and various quantities that depend on the siz…
We report results on a tracking performance study performed using a beam telescope made of 50 micron-thick CMOS pixel sensors on the 1.5 GeV electron beam at the LBNL ALS.
3D silicon detectors are characterized by cylindrical electrodes perpendicular to the surface and penetrating into the bulk material in contrast to standard Si detectors with planar electrodes on its top and bottom. This geometry renders them particularly interesting to be used in environments where standard silicon detectors have limitations, such as for example the radiation environment expected in an LHC upgrade. For the first time, several 3D sensors were assembled as hybrid pixel detectors using the ATLAS-pixel front-end chip and readout electronics. Devices with different electrode confi…
Multiple-GEM detectors are considered to be good candidates for tracking devices in experiments with high hadronic background. We present the results of the triple-GEM detectors beam test in a high intensity pion beam. The detectors had an optimized two-dimensional readout with minimized strip capacitance. Such optimization permitted the starting point of the efficiency plateau down to a gain of 5000. The probability of GEM discharges induced by heavily ionizing particles has been measured as a function of gain: at a gain of 20000 it amounts to 10^(-11) per incident particle. Such a value will…
A pixelated silicon detector, developed originally for particle physics experiments, was used for a beam profile measurement of a Co-60 irradiator in a water phantom. The beam profile was compared to a profile measured with a pinpoint ionization chamber. The differences in the pixel detector and pinpoint chamber relative profiles were within approximately 0.02, and after calculating correction factors with Monte Carlo simulations for the pixel detector, the differences were decreased to almost less than 0.005. The detector's capability to measure pulse-height was used to record an electron pul…
Pixel detectors with cylindrical electrodes that penetrate the silicon substrate (so called 3D detectors) offer advantages over standard planar sensors in terms of radiation hardness, since the electrode distance is decoupled from the bulk thickness. In recent years significant progress has been made in the development of 3D sensors, which culminated in the sensor production for the ATLAS Insertable B-Layer (IBL) upgrade carried out at CNM (Barcelona, Spain) and FBK (Trento, Italy). Based on this success, the ATLAS Forward Physics (AFP) experiment has selected the 3D pixel sensor technology fo…
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…
The TT-PET collaboration is developing a PET scanner for small animals with 30 ps time-of-flight resolution and sub-millimetre 3D detection granularity. The sensitive element of the scanner is a monolithic silicon pixel detector based on state-of-the-art SiGe BiCMOS technology. The first ASIC prototype for the TT-PET was produced and tested in the laboratory and with minimum ionizing particles. The electronics exhibit an equivalent noise charge below 600 e- RMS and a pulse rise time of less than 2 ns, in accordance with the simulations. The pixels with a capacitance of 0.8 pF were measured to …
We report the design and test results of a beam monitor developed for online monitoring in hadron therapy. The beam monitor uses eight silicon pixel sensors, \textit{Topmetal-${II}^-$}, as the anode array. \textit{Topmetal-${II}^-$} is a charge sensor designed in a CMOS 0.35 $μ$m technology. Each \textit{Topmetal-${II}^-$} sensor has $72\times72$ pixels and the pixel size is $83\times83$ $μ$m$^2$. In our design, the beam passes through the beam monitor without hitting the electrodes, making the beam monitor especially suitable for monitoring heavy ion beams. This design also reduces radiation …
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 …
In the context of the studies of the ATLAS High Luminosity LHC programme, radiation tolerant pixel detectors in CMOS technologies are investigated. To evaluate the effects of substrate resistivity on CMOS sensor performance, the H35DEMO demonstrator, containing different diode and amplifier designs, was produced in ams H35 HV-CMOS technology using four different substrate resistivities spanning from $\mathrm{80}$ to $\mathrm{1000~Ω\cdot cm}$. A glueing process using a high-precision flip-chip machine was developed in order to capacitively couple the sensors to FE-I4 Readout ASIC using a thin l…
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.…
A silicon pixel detector with fine pitch size of 19x19 um, developed base on SOI (silicon on insulator) technology, was tested under the illumination of infrared laser pulses. As an alternative way to particle beam tests, the laser pulses were tuned to very short duration and small transverse profile to simulate the tracks of MIPs (minimum ionization particles) in silicon. Hit cluster sizes were measured with focused laser pulses propagating through the SOI detector perpendicular to its surface and most of the induced charge was found to be collected inside the seed pixel. For the first time, …
The ATLAS Forward Physics (AFP) project plans to install 3D silicon pixel detectors about 210 m away from the interaction point and very close to the beamline (2-3 mm). This implies the need of slim edges of about 100-200 $μ$m width for the sensor side facing the beam to minimise the dead area. Another challenge is an expected non-uniform irradiation of the pixel sensors. It is studied if these requirements can be met using slightly-modified FE-I4 3D pixel sensors from the ATLAS Insertable B-Layer production. AFP-compatible slim edges are obtained with a simple diamond-saw cut. Electrical char…
The current CMS silicon pixel detector as the innermost component of the CMS experiment is performing well at LHC design luminosity, but would be subject to severe inefficiencies at LHC peak luminosities of 2x10e34 cm^-2 s^-1. Therefore, an upgrade of the CMS pixel detector is planned, including a new readout chip. The chip design comprises additional on-chip buffer cells as well as high-speed data links and low-threshold comparators in the pixel cells. With these changes the upgraded pixel detector will be able to maintain or even improve the efficiency of the current detector at the increase…
The ATLAS experiment will undergo a major upgrade of the tracker system in view of the high luminosity phase of the LHC (HL-LHC) foreseen to start around 2025. Thin planar pixel modules are promising candidates to instrument the new pixel system, thanks to the reduced contribution to the material budget and their high charge collection efficiency after irradiation. New designs of the pixel cells, with an optimized biasing structure, have been implemented in n-in-p planar pixel productions with sensor thicknesses of 270 um. Using beam tests, the gain in hit efficiency is investigated as a funct…
Thin planar pixel modules are promising candidates to instrument the inner layers of the new ATLAS pixel detector for HL-LHC, thanks to the reduced contribution to the material budget and their high charge collection efficiency after irradiation. 100-200 $μ$m thick sensors, interconnected to FE-I4 read-out chips, have been characterized with radioactive sources and beam tests at the CERN-SPS and DESY. The results of these measurements are reported for devices before and after irradiation up to a fluence of $14\times10^{15}$ n$_{eq}$/cm$^2$. The charge collection and tracking efficiency of the …
We present the design and initial prototype results of a pixellized proton beam profile monitor for the COMET experiment at J-PARC. The goal of COMET is to look for charged lepton flavor violation by direct muon to electron conversion at a sensitivity of $0^{-19}$. An 8 GeV proton beam pulsed at 100 ns with $10^{10}$ protons/s will be used to create muons through pion production and decay. In the final experiment, the proton flux will be raised to $10^{14}$ protons/sec to increase the sensitivity. These requirements of harsh radiation tolerance and fast readout make diamond a good choice for c…
An interpolating two-dimensional X-ray imaging detector based on a single photon counter with gas amplification by GEM (gas electron multiplier) structures is presented. The detector system can be used for time-resolved structure research down to the microsecond-time domain. The prototype detector has been tested at the SAXS beamline at ELETTRA synchrotron light source with a beam energy of 8 keV to test its capabilities in the rough beamline environment. The imaging performance is examined with apertures and standard diffraction targets. Finally, the application in a time-resolved lipid tempe…
Precision and accuracy of quantitative scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) methods such as ptychography, and the mapping of electric, magnetic and strain fields depend on the dose. Reasonable acquisition time requires high beam current and the ability to quantitatively detect both large and minute changes in signal. A new hybrid pixel array detector (PAD), the second-generation Electron Microscope Pixel Array Detector (EMPAD-G2), addresses this challenge by advancing the technology of a previous generation PAD, the EMPAD. The EMPAD-G2 images continuously at a frame-rates up to 10 …
Results on beam tests of 3D silicon pixel sensors aimed at the ATLAS Insertable-B-Layer and High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC)) upgrades are presented. Measurements include charge collection, tracking efficiency and charge sharing between pixel cells, as a function of track incident angle, and were performed with and without a 1.6 T magnetic field oriented as the ATLAS Inner Detector solenoid field. Sensors were bump bonded to the front-end chip currently used in the ATLAS pixel detector. Full 3D sensors, with electrodes penetrating through the entire wafer thickness and active edge, and double-side…
We present measurements of elongation and cluster charge using MIMOSA-18 MAPS pixel matrix with 10 $μ$m pixel pitch, using electron test beams of energies ranging from 15 to 500 MeV. We observe energy dependence of cluster charge and elongation for large incident angles.
Hybrid pixel sensor technology such as the Medipix3 represents a unique tool for electron imaging. We have investigated its performance as a direct imaging detector using a Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) which incorporated a Medipix3 detector with a 300 micrometre thick silicon layer compromising of 256x256 pixels at 55 micrometre pixel pitch. We present results taken with the Medipix3 in Single Pixel Mode (SPM) with electron beam energies in the range, 60 to 200 keV. Measurements of the Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) and the Detective Quantum Efficiency (DQE) were investigated. At…
A 100um thick silicon detector with 1mm2 pad readout optimized for sub-nanosecond time resolution has been developed and tested. Coupled to a purposely developed amplifier based on SiGe HBT technology, this detector was characterized at the H8 beam line at the CERN SPS. An excellent time resolution of (106+-1)ps for silicon detectors was measured with minimum ionizing particles.
A new generation of Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS), produced in a 65 nm CMOS imaging process, promises higher densities of on-chip circuits and, for a given pixel size, more sophisticated in-pixel logic compared to larger feature size processes. MAPS are a cost-effective alternative to hybrid pixel sensors since flip-chip bonding is not required. In addition, they allow for significant reductions of the material budget of detector systems, due to the smaller physical thicknesses of the active sensor and the absence of a separate readout chip. The TANGERINE project develops a sensor sui…
Results of beam tests with planar silicon pixel sensors aimed towards the ATLAS Insertable B-Layer and High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) upgrades are presented. Measurements include spatial resolution, charge collection performance and charge sharing between neighbouring cells as a function of track incidence angle for different bulk materials. Measurements of n-in-n pixel sensors are presented as a function of fluence for different irradiations. Furthermore p-type silicon sensors from several vendors with slightly differing layouts were tested. All tested sensors were connected by bump-bonding to …
Beamstrahlung will constitute an important source of background in a pixel vertex detector at the future International Linear Collider. Electron and positron tracks of this origin impact the pixel planes at angles generally larger than those of secondary hadrons and the corresponding clusters are elongated. We report studies of cluster characteristics using test beam electron tracks incident at various angles at a Mimosa-5 pixel matrix.
An enhancement to the T-980 bent crystal collimation experiment at the Tevatron has been completed. The enhancement was the installation of a pixel telescope inside the vacuum-sealed beam pipe of the Tevatron. The telescope is comprised of six CMS PSI46 pixel plaquettes, arranged as three stations of horizontal and vertical planes, with the CAPTAN system for data acquisition and control. The purpose of the pixel telescope is to measure beam profiles produced by bent crystals under various conditions. The telescope electronics inside the beam pipe initially were not adequately shielded from the…
The response of a position-sensitive Li-glass based scintillation detector to focused beams of 2.5 MeV protons and deuterons has been investigated. The beams were scanned across the detector in 0.5 mm horizontal and vertical steps perpendicular to the beams. Scintillation light was registered using an 8 by 8 pixel multi-anode photomultiplier tube. The signal amplitudes were recorded for each pixel on an event-by-event basis. Several pixels generally registered considerable signals at each beam location. The number of pixels above set thresholds were investigated, with the optimization of the s…
A new method for the extraction of the electric field in the bulk of heavily irradiated silicon pixel sensors is presented. It is based on the measurement of the Lorentz deflection and mobility of electrons as a function of depth. The measurements were made at the CERN H2 beam line, with the beam at a shallow angle with respect to the pixel sensor surface. The extracted electric field is used to simulate the charge collection and the Lorentz deflection in the pixel sensor. The simulated charge collection and the Lorentz deflection is in good agreement with the measurements both for non-irradia…
The CMS experiment at the LHC includes a hybrid silicon pixel detector for the reconstruction of charged tracks and of the interaction vertices. The barrel region consists of n-in-n sensors with 100X150 um^2 cell size processed on diffusion oxygenated float zone silicon. A biasing grid is implemented and pixel isolation is achieved with the moderated p-spray technique. An extensive test program was carried out on the H2 beam line of the CERN SPS. In this paper we describe the sensor layout, the beam test setup and the results obtained with both irradiated and non-irradiated prototype devices. …
The performance of novel n-in-p planar pixel detectors, designed for future upgrades of the ATLAS Pixel system is presented. The n-in-p silicon sensors technology is a promising candidate for the pixel upgrade thanks to its radiation hardness and cost effectiveness, that allow for enlarging the area instrumented with pixel detectors. The n-in-p modules presented here are composed of pixel sensors produced by CiS connected by bump-bonding to the ATLAS readout chip FE-I3. The characterization of these devices has been performed before and after irradiation up to a fluence of 5 x 10**15 1 MeV neq…
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.
Pixel detectors typically display pixel-to-pixel gain variation of a few percent which result in reduced spectroscopic performance. We have developed a calibration method which relies on cross-correlating histograms of many pixel pairs and obtaining large sets of relative shifts. These were subsequently used to calculate absolute pixel shifts and corresponding pixel gains. We demonstrate that this method yields stable gain calibration maps with an order of magnitude less statistics than required by typical approaches. Finally, we demonstrate the accuracy of the method by comparing with gain ma…
This letter presents the design of a monolithic pixel sensor with 10x10 micron^2 pixels in OKI 0.15 micron fully depleted SOI technology and first results of its characterisation. The response of the chip to charged particles has been studied on the 1.35 GeV electron beam at the LBNL ALS.
The Pixel Detector of the ATLAS experiment has shown excellent performance during the whole Run-1 of LHC. Taking advantage of the long shutdown, the detector was extracted from the experiment and brought to surface, to equip it with new service quarter panels, to repair the modules and to ease installation of the Insertable B-Layer (IBL). The IBL is a fourth layer of pixel detectors, and has been installed in May 2014 between the existing Pixel Detector and a new smaller radius beam-pipe at a radius of 3.3 cm. To cope with the high radiation and pixel occupancy due to the proximity to the inte…
For its physics program with a high-intensity hadron beam of up to 2e7 particles/s, the COMPASS experiment at CERN requires tracking of charged particles scattered by very small angles with respect to the incident beam direction. While good resolution in time and space is mandatory, the challenge is imposed by the high beam intensity, requiring radiation-hard detectors which add very little material to the beam path in order to minimize secondary interactions. To this end, a set of triple-GEM detectors with a hybrid readout structure consisting of pixels in the beam region and 2-D strips in th…
The ATLAS experiment will undergo around the year 2025 a replacement of the tracker system in view of the high luminosity phase of the LHC (HL-LHC) with a new 5-layer pixel system. Thin planar pixel sensors are promising candidates to instrument the innermost region of the new pixel system, thanks to the reduced contribution to the material budget and their high charge collection efficiency after irradiation. The sensors of 50-150 $μ$m thickness, interconnected to FE-I4 read-out chips, have been characterized with radioactive sources and beam tests. In particular active edge sensors have been …
We describe a hybrid pixel array detector (EMPAD - electron microscope pixel array detector) adapted for use in electron microscope applications, especially as a universal detector for scanning transmission electron microscopy. The 128 x 128 pixel detector consists of a 500 um thick silicon diode array bump-bonded pixel-by-pixel to an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). The in-pixel circuitry provides a 1,000,000:1 dynamic range within a single frame, allowing the direct electron beam to be imaged while still maintaining single electron sensitivity. A 1.1 kHz framing rate enables r…
We present a new technique for pixel hit reconstruction with the CMS pixel detector. The technique is based on fitting the pixel cluster projections to templates obtained using a detailed simulation called Pixelav. Pixelav successfully describes the profiles of clusters measured in beam tests of radiation-damaged sensors. Originally developed to optimally estimate the coordinates of hits after the radiation damage, the technique has superior performance before irradiation as well, reducing the resolution tails of reconstructed track parameters and significantly reducing the light quark backgro…
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…
The response of a position-sensitive Li-glass scintillator detector being developed for thermal-neutron detection with 6 mm position resolution has been investigated using collimated beams of thermal neutrons. The detector was moved perpendicularly through the neutron beams in 0.5 to 1.0 mm horizontal and vertical steps. Scintillation was detected in an 8 X 8 pixel multi-anode photomultiplier tube on an event-by-event basis. In general, several pixels registered large signals at each neutron-beam location. The number of pixels registering signal above a set threshold was investigated, with the…
