CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) for future vertex detectors

The features of the 180nm TowerJazz1 CMOS technology allow for the first time the use of CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) under the harsh operational conditions of the LHC experiments. The stringent requirements of the ALICE Inner Tracking System (ITS) in terms of material budget, radiation hardness, readout speed and a low power consumption have thus lead to the choice of MAPS as baseline technology option for the recently approved upgrade of the ITS and are the key drivers for R&D efforts on basic transistor and Explorer and MIMOSA pixel sensor prototypes produced in TowerJazz technology. Though the radiation loads expected for the ITS are below those of ATLAS and CMS, it is however necessary to assess the radiation hardness for ITS MAPS prototypes. Total Ionizing Dose (TID) radiation hardness has been established for basic transistor structures using a 60keV X-ray machine. The main operational characteristics and detection properties such as noise, charge collection efficiency and signal over noise ratio of Explorer-0 and MIMOSA32 and MIMOSA34 pixel sensor prototypes have been studied using X-rays (55Fe) and test beams at CERN and DESY before and after Non Ionizing Energy Loss (NIEL) and TID irradiation. In this paper the results of these R&D activities will be presented and discussed.

CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) demonstrate excellent performances in the field of charged particle tracking. A single point resolution of 1–2 μm and a detection efficiency close to 100% were routinely observed with various MAPS designs featuring up to 106 pixels on active areas as large as 4 cm2[1]. Those features make MAPS an interesting technology for vertex detectors in particle and heavy ion physics. In order to adapt the sensors to the high particle fluxes expected in this application, we designed a sensor with fast column parallel readout and partially depleted active volume. The latter feature was expected to increase the tolerance of the sensors to non-ionizing radiation by one order of magnitude with respect to the standard technology. This paper discusses the novel sensor and presents the results on its radiation tolerance.

CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) demonstrated excellent performances in the field of charged particle tracking. Among their strong points are an single point resolution few μm, a light material budget of 0.05% X0 in combination with a good radiation tolerance and high rate capability. Those features make the sensors a valuable technology for vertex detectors of various experiments in heavy ion and particle physics. To reduce the load on the event builders and future mass storage systems, we have developed algorithms suited for preprocessing and reducing the data streams generated by the MAPS. This real-time processing employs remaining free resources of the FPGAs of the readout controllers of the detector and complements the on-chip data reduction circuits of the MAPS.

Development of a triple well CMOS MAPS device with in-pixel signal processing and sparsified readout capabilities

Response of the MIMOSIS-1 CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor to particle beams with different dE/dx

A general purpose beam telescope of new generation has been constructed and tested. Four reference planes of the telescope are based on CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS), thinned down to less than 100 microns. Noise optimized, high precision tracking pixel sensors have been designed and fabricated for this application using AMS 0.35 OPTO process. Single sensor consists of 512times512 pixel array with a pitch of 10 mum, providing an active area of 5times5 mm2. Measured signal-to-noise ratio for minimum ionizing particle (MIP) is more than 27 at room temperature and extrapolated single point (2D) resolution is below 1 mum. Use of such sensors for beam telescope provide an attractive solution for high precision tracking of minimum ionizing particles even in case of their relatively low energy. Telescope tracking performance study, including beam tests results with hundreds GeV pions is presented. Comparison of sensors fabricated using standard (14 mum thick epitaxy) and experimental (20 mum epitaxy) wafers is also discussed.

Monolithic active pixel sensors (MAPS) in a VLSI CMOS technology

CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) have demonstrated excellent performance as tracking detectors for charged particles. They provide an outstanding spatial resolution (a few μm), a detection efficiency of ≳99.9%, very low material budget (0.05% X0) and good radiation tolerance (≳ 1 Mrad, ≳ 1014 neq/cm2) [1]. This recommends them as an interesting technology for various applications in heavy ion and particle physics.For the vertex detectors of CBM and ALICE, we are aiming at developing large scale sensors with an integration time of 30μs. Reaching this goal is eased by features available in CMOS-processes with 0.18μm feature size. To exploit this option, some sensor designs have been migrated from the previously used 0.35μm processes to this novel process. We report about our first findings with the devices obtained with a focus on noise and the tolerance to ionizing radiation.

The Heavy Flavor Tracker (HFT) is a recently installed micro-vertex detector upgrade to the STAR experiment at RHIC, consisting of three subsystems with various technologies of silicon sensors arranged in 4 concentric cylinders. The two innermost layers of the HFT close to the beam pipe, the Pixel (“PXL”) subsystem, employ CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor (MAPS) technology that integrate the sensor, front-end electronics, and zero-suppression circuitry in one silicon die. This paper presents selected characteristics of the PXL detector part of the HFT and the hardware, firmware and software associated with the readout system for this detector.

ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is the heavy-ion experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. As an important part of its upgrade plans, the ALICE experiment will schedule the installation of a new Inner Tracking System (ITS) during the Long Shutdown 2 (LS2) of the LHC. The new ITS layout will consist of seven concentric layers, $\approx$ 12.5 Gigapixel camera covering about 10m$^2$ with Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS). This choice of technology has been guided by the tight requirements on the material budget of 0.3$\%$ X/X$_0$ per layer for the three innermost layers and backed by the significant progress in the field of MAPS in recent years. The technology initially chosen for the ITS upgrade is the TowerJazz 180 nm CMOS Technology. It offers a standard epitaxial layer of 15 - 18 $\mu$m with a resistivity between 1 and 5 k$\Omega$~cm$^{-1}$ and a gate oxide thickness below 4 nm, thus being more robust to Total Ionizing Dose (TID). The main subject of this thesis is to implement a novel digital pixel readout architecture for MAPS. This thesis aims to study this novel readout architecture as an alternative to the rolling-shutter readout. However, this must be investigated through the study of several chip readout architectures during the R$\&$D phase. Another objective of this thesis is the study and characterization of TowerJazz, if it meets the Non-Ionizing Energy Loss (NIEL) and Single Event Effects (SEE) of the ALICE ITS upgrade program. Other goals of this thesis are: Implementation of the top-down flow for this CMOS process and the design of multiple readouts for different prototypes up to the assembly of a full-scale prototype. Characterization of the radiation hardness and SEE of the chips submitted to fabrication. Characterization of full custom designs using analog simulations and the generation of digital models for the simulation chain needed for the verification process. \item Implementation and study of different digital readouts to meet the ITS upgrade program in integration time, pixel size and power consumption, from the conceptual idea, production and fabrication phase. SChapter 1 is a brief overview of CERN, the LHC and the detectors complex. The ALICE ITS will be explained, focusing on the ITS upgrade in terms of detector needs and design constraints. Chapter 2 explains the properties of silicon detectors and the detector material and the principles of operation for MAPS. Chapters 3 and 4 describe the ALPIDE prototypes and their readout based on MAPS; this forms the central part of this work, including the multiple families of pixel detectors fabricated in order to reach the final design for the ITS. The ALPIDE3/pALPIDE3B chip, the latest MAPS chip designed, will be explained in detail, as well focusing in the matrix digital readout. In chapter 5 the noise measurements and its characterization are presented including a brief summary of detector response to irradiation with soft X-rays, sources and particle beams. on the ITS upgrade in terms of detector needs and design constraints. Chapter 2 explains the properties of silicon detectors and the detector material and the principles of operation for MAPS. Chapters 3 and 4 describe the ALPIDE prototypes and their readout based on MAPS; this forms the central part of this work, including the multiple families of pixel detectors fabricated in order to reach the final design for the ITS. The ALPIDE3/pALPIDE3B chip, the latest MAPS chip designed, will be explained in detail, as well focusing in the matrix digital readout. In chapter 5 the noise measurements and its characterization are presented including a brief summary of detector response to irradiation with soft X-rays, sources and particle beams.

Due to their low noise, CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors are suited to sense X-rays with a few keV quantum energy, which is of interest for high resolution X-ray imaging. Moreover, the good energy resolution of the silicon sensors might be used to measure this quantum energy. Combining both features with the good spatial resolution of CMOS sensors opens the potential to build ``color sensitive" X-ray cameras. Taking such colored images is hampered by the need to operate the CMOS sensors in a single photon counting mode, which restricts the photon flux capability of the sensors. More importantly, the charge sharing between the pixels smears the potentially good energy resolution of the sensors. Based on our experience with CMOS sensors for charged particle tracking, we studied techniques to overcome the latter by means of an offline processing of the data obtained from a CMOS sensor prototype. We found that the energy resolution of the pixels can be recovered at the expense of reduced quantum efficiency. We will introduce the results of our study and discuss the feasibility of taking colored X-ray pictures with CMOS sensors.

The heavy-ion programme of the NA61/SHINE experiment at CERN SPS is expanding to allow precise measurements of exotic particles with lifetime few hundred microns. A Vertex Detector for open charm measurements at the SPS is being constructed by the NA61/SHINE Collaboration to meet the challenges of high spatial resolution of secondary vertices and efficiency of track registration. This task is solved by the application of the coordinate sensitive CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors with extremely low material budget in the new Vertex Detector.A small-acceptance version of the Vertex Detector is being tested this year, later it will be expanded to a large-acceptance version. Simulation studies will be presented. A method of track reconstruction in the inhomogeneous magnetic field for the Vertex Detector was developed and implemented. Numerical calculations show the possibility of high precision measurements in heavy ion collisions of strange and multi strange particles, as well as heavy flavours, like charmed particles.

Silicon pixel detectors are widely used as vertex detectors or inner trackers in high-energy collider experiments because of their excellent spatial resolution, extremely high counting capability and low power consumption. The study of the silicon pixel detector based on the monolithic active pixel sensor (MAPS) is one of the R&D schemes for upgrading the inner chamber of the Beijing spectrometer Ⅲ (BESⅢ) drift chamber (MDC). It is planned to build a 1/10 scale prototype of the inner chamber. The detector module is the basic component of the prototype, consisting of ten MIMOSA28 chips thinned to 50 μm, a flexible cable and a carbon fiber support. In order to study the performance of the module, a test system is set up. The system is composed mainly of five-layer modules, readout electronics and data acquisition system. This article focuses on the realization of the continuous data readout method with trigger marking function, the measurement of the noise level of the detector modules, the module response test by a radioactive source, and the study of the hit reconstruction algorithm. The test of trigger readout logic verifies the correctness of the continuous readout method with trigger marking. It can be concluded that analyzing consecutive three frames data (the previous frame, the current frame and the next frame) of each valid trigger will not lead to effective hit data loss. The noise level of the detector module is tested. The results show that the fixed pattern noise (FPN) is 0.253 mV, and the temporal noise (TN) is 1.65 mV. The fake hit rate is less than <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$ {10}^{-5} $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20210464_M1.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20210464_M1.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula> that can be ignored when the chip threshold is set to be above 4σ of noise. Two algorithms for hit reconstruction (i.e. adjacent method and comparison method) are studied and compared. When the average number of fired pixels caused by each hit is 2.562 and more than four hits in each frame of data, the adjacent method can find all of the fired pixels to be faster. During the test, the detector module and the electronics are proved to work well. These studies lay a foundation for further testing the performance of the detector prototype.

The MIMOSA pixel sensors developed in Strasbourg have demonstrated attractive features for the detection of charged particles in high energy physics. So far, full-size sensors have been prototyped only with analog readout, which limits the output rate to about 1000 frames/second. The new MIMOSA 26 sensor provides a 2.2 cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> sensitive surface with an improved readout speed of 10,000 frames/second and data throughput compression. It incorporates pixel output discrimination for binary readout and zero suppression micro-circuits at the sensor periphery to stream only fired pixel out. The sensor is back from foundry since february 2009 and has being characterized in laboratory and in test beam. The temporal noise is measured around 13-14 e <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-</sup> and an operation point corresponding to an efficiency of 99.5±0.1 % for a fake rate of 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-4</sup> per pixel can be reached at room temperature. MIMOSA 26 equips the final version of the EUDET beam telescope and prefigures the architecture of monolithic active pixel sensors (MAPS) for coming vertex detectors (STAR, CBM and ILC experiments) which have higher requirements. Developments in the architecture and technology of the sensors are ongoing and should allow to match the desired readout speed and radiation tolerance. Finally, the integration of MAPS into a micro-vertex detector is addressed. A prototype ladder equipped, on both sides, with a row of 6 MIMOSA 26-like sensors is under study, aiming for a total material budget about 0.3% X <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0</sub> .

ID: 139 Monte Carlo simulations for imaging in proton therapy