Antonio Bulgheroni

Silicon ultra fast cameras for electron and γ sources in medical applications

Abstract SUCIMA (Silicon Ultra fast Cameras for electron and γ sources In Medical Applications) is a project approved by the European Commission with the primary goal of developing a real time dosimeter based on direct detection in a Silicon substrate. The main applications, the detector characteristics and technologies and the data acquisition system are described.

Hybrid active pixel sensors and SOI inspired option

Abstract Two novel pixel sensor concepts for future linear collider applications are presented in this paper: a hybrid pixel sensor characterized by a layout improving the single point resolution and a monolithic detector inspired by silicon on insulator (SOI) technology. The results of charge collection studies for the first prototypes of hybrid pixel sensors with interleaved pixels are reported and the new detector test structures are introduced. The technology and the readout architecture design for SOI sensors are also discussed.

Laboratory and in-beam tests of a novel real-time beam monitor for hadrontherapy

Real time monitoring of hadrontherapy beam intensity and profile is a critical issue for the optimization of dose delivery to carcinogenic tissue, patient safety and operation of the accelerator complex. For this purpose an innovative beam monitor, secondary electron emission for low interception monitoring (SLIM) is being developed in the framework of the EC-funded silicon ultra-fast cameras for electrons and gamma sources in medical application (SUCIMA) project. The detector system is based on the secondary emission of electrons by a nonperturbative, sub-micron thick Al foil placed directly in the extracted beam path. The secondary electrons, accelerated by an electrostatic focusing system, are detected by a monolithic silicon position-sensitive sensor, which provides the beam intensity and its position with a precision of 1 mm at a 10 kHz frame rate. The results of the laboratory tests of the first system prototype with thermoionic electrons emitted from a hot Tungsten wire are presented together with the measurements performed on a low intensity hadron beam at the Cyclotron of the Joint Research Centre in Ispra.

Monolithic active pixel sensor realized in SOI technology—concept and verification

The paper presents the concept and the verification of a novel silicon monolithic active pixel detector realized in the SOI technology. The reliability and the basic electrical characteristics of the sensor are studied and the sensor sensitivity to the ionising radiation is investigated in details.

Fully depleted monolithic active pixel sensor in SOI technology

An active pixel detector, which exploits wafer-bonded silicon on insulator (SOI) substrates for integration of the readout electronics with the pixel detector, is presented. The main concepts of the proposed monolithic sensor and the preliminary tests results with ionising radiation sources are addressed. Silicon on insulator is an alternative solution for a monolithic active pixel detector, which allows integrating a fully depleted sensor and front-end electronics active layers into one silicon wafer. The main idea of the sensor relies on the use of both monolithic silicon layers (device and support layers) of the SOI substrate for fabrication of pixel detector diodes and readout electronics. Such detectors can find wide range of applications, not only in particle physics but also in medicine, space science and many other disciplines. The sensor structure and the readout configuration have been developed and the measurements of a dedicated test structure have validated the new technology of the SOI detector. Small SOI sensor matrices with 8 by 8 channels have been recently produced and tested.

Design and Performance of a DNW CMOS Active Pixel Sensor for the ILC Vertex Detector

The SDR0 (Sparsified Digital Readout) prototype is a proof-of-principle design which is aimed at studying the feasibility of pixel level sparsified digital readout in CMOS MAPS matching the requirements for the Vertex Detector at the International Linear Collider. The deep n-well (DNW) available in deep sub-micron CMOS processes is used to collect the charge released in the substrate, and signal processing is performed by a classical optimum amplifying stage for capacitive detectors. The chip has been designed in a 130 nm triple-well CMOS process and fabricated by STMicroelectronics. This first prototype includes a 16 times 16 DNW-MAPS matrix with sparsified readout architecture, an 8 times 8 matrix with digital output and selectable access to the analog output in each cell, and a 3 × 3 matrix with all the analog outputs available at the same time. The analog front-end has been characterized and the digital readout circuits have been successfully tested at frequencies up to 50 MHz. The circuit design and the performance of SDR0 are discussed in this paper.

Performance of a DNW CMOS active pixel sensor designed for the ILC Vertex Detector

The SDR0 (Sparsified Digital Readout) prototype is a proof-of-principle design which is aimed at studying the feasibility of pixel level sparsified digital readout in CMOS MAPS matching the requirements for the Vertex Detector at the International Linear Collider. The deep n-well (DNW) available in deep sub-micron CMOS processes is used to collect the charge released in the substrate, and signal processing is performed by a classical optimum amplifying stage for capacitive detectors. The chip has been designed and fabricated in a 130nm triple-well CMOS process by STMicroelectronics. This first prototype includes a 16×16 DNW-MAPS matrix with sparsified readout architecture, an 8×8 matrix with digital output and selectable access to the analog output in each cell, and a 3×3 matrix with all the analog outputs available at the same time. The analog front-end has been characterized and the digital readout circuits have been successfully tested at frequencies up to 50MHz. The circuit design and the performance of SDR0 are discussed in this paper.

The RAPSODI project: SiPM development for applied research in radiation protection

RAPSODI is a research project funded by the European Commission within the sixth framework program. The aim of the project is the development of a set of radiation detectors for three well defined applications based on Silicon Photo-Multipliers (SiPM), representing the state-of-the-art in single photon sensitive detectors. This paper focuses on the currently most advanced RAPSODI application, namely in-vivo real-time dosimetry in mammography.

TEST OF REAL-TIME IDENTIFICATION OF SPARSE DATA PATTERNS IN SILICON PIXEL DETECTORS

MARCIN JASTRZAB, ANTONIO BULGHERONI, MASSIMO CACCIA, CHIARA CAPPELLINI, GRZEGORZ CHWIERUT, WOJCIECH KUCEWICZ, FABIO RISIGO Electronics Department, AGH-University of Science and Technology, Al. Mickiewicza 30, Krakow 30-059, Poland Dipartimento di Scienze CC.FF.MM., Universita dell’Insubria, via Valleggio 11, 22100 Como, Italy Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita di Roma 3 e INFN Sezione di Roma 3, via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146 Roma, Italy

SLIM (secondary emission monitor for low interception monitoring) an innovative non-destructive beam monitor for the extraction lines of a hadrontherapy centre

Real time monitoring of hadrontherapy beam intensity and profile is a critical issue for the optimisation of dose delivery to carcinogenic tissue, patient safety and operation of the accelerator complex. For this purpose an innovative beam monitor, SLIM (secondary electron emission for low interception monitoring) is being developed in the framework of the EC-funded SUCIMA (silicon ultra-fast cameras for electrons and gamma sources in medical application) project The detector system is based on the secondary emission of electrons by a non-perturbative, sub-micron thick Al foil placed directly in the extracted beam path. The secondary electrons, accelerated by an electrostatic focusing system, are detected by a monolithic silicon position-sensitive sensor, which provides the beam intensity and its position with a precision of 1 mm at a 10 kHz frame rate. The results of the laboratory tests of the first system prototype with thermoionic electrons emitted from a hot Tungsten wire are presented together with the measurements performed on a low intensity hadron beam at the Cyclotron of the Joint Research Centre in Ispra.