Development of HV-CMOS sensor technology for the next generation of particle physics experiments

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Over the last 25 years, silicon sensor technology has become a critical ingredient in the success of the most challenging experiments in fundamental physics. The discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), most notably, would not have been possible without the very fine grained sensors which sit at the heart of the CERN detectors to measure (track) the trajectories of thousands of particles produced tens of millions of times per second. The next generation of experiments, being planned today, relies on a step-change in the performance of tracking sensor technologies. Scientists seek detectors that provide micron scale position accuracy and better than one nanosecond timing resolution, while being substantially thinner than a sheet of paper and requiring little cooling. To date it has not been possible to combine all of them in a single device.In this research, I propose to develop novel Depleted Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (DMAPS) to achieve these parameters in a single device using industry standard, and therefore cost-effective, High Voltage-Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (HV-CMOS) processes. DMAPS have already been adopted as the chosen sensor technology for the Mu3e experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, for which I work on the construction of the first DMAPS pixel tracker that will come online in 2020. DMAPS are also developed for the planned phase-II upgrade of ATLAS at the LHC, for which the final technology decision is expected in 2019. Within the particle physics instrumentation community, there is now a wide consensus that DMAPS will replace traditional tracking sensor technologies in the next generation of particle physics experiments.In spite of the major improvements already demonstrated by DMAPS, the enormous challenges set by future particle physics experiments demand further research to achieve yet more performant sensors. The main goal of this research is to develop highly performant DMAPS, targeting in the first place the reduction of the pixel area, the improvement of the time resolution and the increase of the radiation tolerance. I will also develop full-size DMAPS detectors with optimised performance and pursue the deployment of these devices for particle physics experiments and beyond. These new detectors can have a massive impact in experiments such as a planned upgrade of Mu3e and future upgrades at the High Luminosity-LHC (HL-LHC), but also in the medical and commercial fields as the low cost typical of HV-CMOS processes will make DMAPS tracking detectors available to many.