2020, Paolozzi, L., Cardarelli, R., Débieux, S., Favre, Y., Ferrère, D., Gonzalez-Sevilla, S., Iacobucci, G., Kaynak, M., Martinelli, F., Nessi, M., Rücker, H., Sanna, I., Sultan, D.M.S., Valerio, P., Zaffaroni, E.

SiGe BiCMOS technology can be used to produce ultra-fast, low-power silicon pixel sensors that provide state-of-the-art time resolution even without internal gain. The development of such sensors requires the identification and control of the main factors that may degrade the timing performance as well as the characterisation of the dependance of the sensor time resolution on the amplifier power consumption. Measurements with a 90Sr source of a prototype sensor produced in SG13G2 technology from IHP Microelectronics shows a time resolution of 140 ps at an amplifier current of 7 µA and 45 ps at a power consumption of 150 µA. The resolution on the measurement of the signal time-over-threshold, which is used to correct for time walk, is the main factor affecting the timing performance of this prototype. c 2020 CERN. Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of Sissa Medialab.

2019, Iacobucci, G., Cardarelli, R., Débieux, S., Di Bello, F.A., Favre, Y., Hayakawa, D., Kaynak, M., Nessi, M., Paolozzi, L., Rücker, H., Sultan, D.M.S., Valerio, P.

A monolithic pixelated silicon detector designed for high time resolution has been produced in the SG13G2 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS technology of IHP. This proof-of-concept chip contains hexagonal pixels of 65 µm and 130 µm side. The SiGe front-end electronics implemented provides an equivalent noise charge of 90 and 160 e- for a pixel capacitance of 70 and 220 fF, respectively, and a total time walk of less than 1 ns. Lab measurements with a 90Sr source show a time resolution of the order of 50 ps. This result is competitive with silicon technologies that integrate an avalanche gain mechanism. © 2019 CERN.

2019, Paolozzi, L., Bandi, Y., Cardarelli, R., Débieux, S., Favre, Y., Ferrère, D., Forshaw, D., Hayakawa, D., Iacobucci, G., Kaynak, M., Miucci, A., Nessi, M., Ripiccini, E., Rücker, H., Valerio, P., Weber, M.

The TT-PET collaboration is developing a small animal TOF-PET scanner based on monolithic silicon pixel sensors in SiGe BiCMOS technology. The demonstrator chip, a small-scale version of the final detector ASIC, consists of a 03 × 1 pixel matrix integrated with the front-end, a 50 ps binning TDC and read out logic. The chip, thinned down to 100 µm and backside metallized, was operated at a voltage of 180 V. The tests on a beam line of minimum ionizing particles show a detection efficiency greater than 99.9% and a time resolution down to 110 ps. © 2019 CERN.

2019, Valerio, P., Cardarelli, R., Iacobucci, G., Paolozzi, L., Ripiccini, E., Hayakawa, D., Bruno, S., Caltabiano, A., Kaynak, M., Rücker, H., Nessi, M.

Time-of-flight measurement is an important advancement in PET scanners to improve image reconstruction with a lower delivered radiation dose. This article describes the monolithic ASIC for the TT-PET project, a novel idea for a high-precision PET scanner for small animals. The chip uses a SiGe Bi-CMOS process for timing measurements, integrating a fully-depleted pixel matrix with a low-power BJT-based front-end per channel, integrated on the same 100 µm thick die. The target timing resolution of the scanner is 30 ps RMS for electrons from the conversion of 511 keV photons. The system will include 1.6 million channels across almost 2000 different chips. A full-featured demonstrator chip with a 3×10 matrix of 500×500 µm2 pixels was fabricated to validate each block. Its design and experimental results are presented here. © 2019 CERN.

2018, Paolozzi, L., Bandi, Y., Benoit, M., Cardarelli, R., Débieux, S., Forshaw, D., Hayakawa, D., Iacobucci, G., Kaynak, M., Miucci, A., Nessi, M., Ratib, O., Ripiccini, E., Rücker, H., Valerio, P., Weber, M.

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 have a detection efficiency greater than 99% and, although in the absence of the post-processing, a time resolution of approximately 200 ps .