CMOS Silicon Photomultiplier Development

Abstract

CMOS—complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology at present time is the most advanced semiconductor technology for the development and production of microelectronic elements. Many signs have long pointed toward CMOS as the preferable sensor technology of the future. In many ways, the bright future for CMOS sensor technology was made officially by leading electronic companies in early 2015 to claim that up to 2025 all kind of sensors will be produced in CMOS technology. Beyond this, improvements of CMOS technology and the strong price/performance ratio of CMOS sensors make them increasingly attractive for many academic and industrial applications. The development of Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM)—a new sensor for the low photon flux in standard CMOS technology—is an important new step for the development, optimisation and mass production of SiPM for the wide application areas as nuclear medicine, experimental physics, visualisation systems. It is an important step for the future developments of new SiPM structures, especially advanced digital SiPM structures, digital SiPM imagers, and Avalanche Pixel structures (APix) for the detection of ionisation particles.