R. Kohrs

A DEPFET Based Beam Telescope With Submicron Precision Capability

For the detection of secondary vertices of long lived particles containing bottom and charm quarks at the International Linear Collider (ILC), a DEPFET pixel detector is one of the technologically favored options. In a DEPFET sensor a MOSFET pixel detector is integrated on a sidewards depleted silicon bulk sensor, thus combining the advantages of a fully depleted silicon sensor with in-pixel amplification. DEPFET pixel matrices have been characterized in a high energy particle beam. Since the DEPFET is a very high precision device, given its large S/N (> 100) and small pixel size (36 × 22 ¿m2), a DEPFET based pixel telescope consisting of 5 DEPFETs has been developed. The uncertainty on the predicted position for a device under test (DUT) positioned inside the telescope was found to be 1.4 ¿m with the existing device, due to the limited performance of two of the five DEPFET planes. A DEPFET telescope built of 5 modules equivalent to the best plane presented here, would have a track extrapolation error as low as 0.65 ¿m at the DUT plane.

New results on DEPFET pixel detectors for radiation imaging and high energy particle detection

DEPFET pixel detectors are unique devices in terms of energy and spatial resolution because very low noise (ENC = 2.2e at room temperature) operation can be obtained by implementing the amplifying transistor in the pixel cell itself. Full DEPFET pixel matrices have been built and operated for autoradiographical imaging with imaging resolutions of 4.3 /spl plusmn/ 0.7 lp/mm at 22 keV. For applications in low energy X-ray astronomy the high energy resolution of DEPFET detectors is attractive. For particle physics, DEPFET pixels are interesting as low material detectors with high spatial resolution. For a Linear Collider detector the readout must be very fast. New readout chips have been designed and produced for the development of a DEPFET module for a pixel detector at the proposed TESLA collider (520 /spl times/ 4000 pixels) with 50 MHz line rate and 25 kHz frame rate. The circuitry contains current memory cells and current hit scanners for fast pedestal subtraction and sparsified readout. The imaging performance of DEPFET devices as well as present achievements towards a DEPFET vertex detector for a Linear Collider are presented.

First results of DEPFET based Active Pixel Sensor prototypes for the XEUS Wide Field Imager

The concept of an Active Pixel Sensor (APS) based on the integrated detector/amplifier structure DEPFET (DEpleted P-channel Field Effect Transistor) has been developed to cope with the challenging requirements of the XEUS Wide Field Imager. The DEPFET-APS combines high energy resolution, fast readout, and random accessible pixels allowing the application of flexible readout modes. First prototypes of DEPFET-based Active Pixel Sensors with a 64 x 64 pixel format and 75 μm x 75 μm pixel area have been produced at the MPI semiconductor laboratory. The APS is read out row by row, i.e. the pixel signals of one row are processed in parallel by a 64 channel CMOS amplifier/multiplexer chip of the CAMEX type. The addressing of one row of pixels for readout and reset is done by two control chips of the SWITCHER type fabricated in a high-voltage CMOS technology. The processing time for one row is of the order of a few micro-seconds. APS operation, the control and data acquisition system are described, and first experimental results are presented.

Development of a prototype module for a DEPFET pixel vertex detector for a linear collider

For operation at a linear collider the excellent noise performance of depleted field effect transistor (DEPFET) pixels allows building very thin detectors with high spatial resolution and low power consumption. However, high readout speeds of 50 MHz line rate and 20 kHz for the full detector must be reached. A prototype system is presented, using a new DEPFET pixel matrix (128 /spl times/ 64 pixels), fast steering chips (Switcher II) for row wise operation and a fast current based readout chip (CURO II). The sensors with small linear DEPFET pixels (22/spl times/36 /spl mu/m/sup 2/) are optimized for fast readout and high spatial resolution. Measurements show that the complete removal of the accumulated signal charge from the internal gate (complete clear), which is fundamental for the foreseen readout mode, is feasible. The current based readout chip CUROII, containing current memory cells, pedestal subtraction and on chip zero suppression for a triggerless operation has been fabricated and tested. First results of a full prototype system are presented.

Performance of a DEPFET prototype module for the ILC vertex detector

For the detection of secondary vertices of long lived bottom and charm quarks at the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC) a DEPFET pixel detector is one of the favored technology options. DEPFET pixel sensors, in which the amplifying transistor structure is contained in the pixel cell itself on a fully depleted bulk, are unique devices in terms of their large signal and low noise capability and their obtainable spatial resolution with very thin detectors. DEPFET pixel prototype modules with close to ILC specifications have been tested in the laboratory and, for the first time, in a 6 GeV electron test beam. The different noise sources have been calculated and compared with the measured value of ENC/spl ap/225 e/sup -/ for the entire readout chain.

Noise and spectroscopic performance of DEPMOSFET matrix devices for XEUS

DEPMOSFET based Active Pixel Sensor (APS) matrix devices, originally developed to cope with the challenging requirements of the XEUS Wide Field Imager, have proven to be a promising new imager concept for a variety of future X-ray imaging and spectroscopy missions like Simbol-X. The devices combine excellent energy resolution, high speed readout and low power consumption with the attractive feature of random accessibility of pixels. A production of sensor prototypes with 64 x 64 pixels with a size of 75 μm x 75 μm each has recently been finished at the MPI semiconductor laboratory in Munich. The devices are built for row-wise readout and require dedicated control and signal processing electronics of the CAMEX type, which is integrated together with the sensor onto a readout hybrid. A number of hybrids incorporating the most promising sensor design variants has been built, and their performance has been studied in detail. A spectroscopic resolution of 131 eV has been measured, the readout noise is as low as 3.5 e- ENC. Here, the dependence of readout noise and spectroscopic resolution on the device temperature is presented.

DEPFET Active Pixel Sensors

DEPFET pixels offer a unique possibility for a high resolution pixel vertex detector at a future linear collider (ILC) experiment. The key idea of DEPFET sensors is the integration of amplifying transistors into a fully depleted bulk. The excellent noise performance obtained through the low input capacitance in combination with the full signal from the depleted bulk leads to a large S/N ratio. The sensor itself can therefore be made very thin (50μm) without loss of efficiency. In this article the progress of the DEPFET development towards an ILC vertex detector is presented. Properties of prototype matrices and dedicated ASIC electronics have been characterized in various laboratory and test beam measurements. In particular a point resolution of less than 2 μm has been demonstrated (using 450 μm thick sensors). Based on these results larger matrices, improved readout and control electronics have been designed which are presently in production. In parallel software was developed to simulate the performance of a DEPFET based vertex detector in an ILC experiment.