Our SENSE TechForum on photosensing and associated electronics took place in Geneva at the Ècole de Physique on June 21-22, 2018. Around 90 people found their way to sunny Geneva and took the opportunity to discuss about photosensor developments. Researchers and representatives of companies active in photosensing and associated electronics took part to exchange recent developments on SiPMs, photomultipliers and other photon-sensing devices and their associated electronics.
The TechForum started by review talks about the application of SiPMs in different areas: High Energy Physics, Astrophysics, Medical application, Ranging and Quantum Computing. Many questions were discussed between presenters and audience. The discussions and questions were also given to the SENSE team which presented their activities on various fields like the cooperation agreement and the SENSE Roadmap. For those, who weren´t able to participate in the ICASiPM the week before, a short summary of the meeting was given. The lively first day closed with an industrial session where several companies presented their recent developments. In the evening all interested participants visited CERN for excursion.
During the next day the behaviour of SiPM devices under high radiation environment and cryogenic temperatures was presented as well as new ideas for LLL sensors. An important factor, the readout electronics was also discussed in two presentations.
Furthermore the two projects ATTRACT and FAST presented their funding opportunities. The plenary sessions finished with invited talks on Future evolution of PMT and SiPM technologies. The TechForum closed with a poster session where also final discussion among the participants took place.
During the two days of the TechForum, the whole community showed a strong wish to cooperate on standardisation of SiPM characterisation. A closer cooperation between SENSE and the organizers of the ICASiPM was decided. This includes the usage of the SENSE forum for discussion among the ICASiPM working groups.
Another working group was formed for the space application of SiPMs initiated by Jochen Greiner. Interested people are invited to register to the forum and join the discussions.
With the input from the TechForum we want to update our Roadmap and will release a new version soon.
The discussions during the meeting can be summarized in a wish list for different topics:
High Energy:
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Radiation hardness
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Low noise devices
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Small cell size but with high FF
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Compromise between thickness of depleted region and reduction of peak field in p-n junction
Cryo-low noise:
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High PDE for UV light (bare sensors need more tests)
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Provide sensors in adequate die
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Careful selection of quenching resistor to e more stable at low temperature
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Large surface sensors
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Low tunnelling probability
Room Temperature:
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Low XT, Large PDE, low rise time
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Large surface sensors (capacitance, signal shape)
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Low Rbias
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Low T dependence of VBD
During TechForum we distinguish a few main trends in LLL sensoring:
Producers of SiPMs are going into two parallel directions: SiPM for UV range and SiPM for red light. Another topic is hybrid boarding and following Edoardo Charbon there are a few main perspectives for 2020 for CMOS based LLL sensors:
- Sub-65nm CMOS
- large, scalable designs (LegoTM approach)
- backside illumination (BSI) 3D IC
- new materials (InP, GaAs, Ge, polymers)
- small pixels, low noise, μ-lenses
The talks and posters can be found in the timetable on the indico webpage: https://indico.cern.ch/event/688729/timetable/#all.detailed. Please ask us for the password for accessing the documents.
We hope all participants enjoyed the TechForum and had two pleasant days in Geneva.
