An Overview of SiPMs
A general overview of SiPMs in radiation environments.
Radiation tolerance tests on particle detector components such as SiPMs and their associated electronics are crucial to the success of high-energy physics experiments and scientific missions in space. To this end, an 18 MeV proton beamline is operational at the medical cyclotron of the Bern University Hospital (Inselspital). While the cyclotron’s primary purpose is the production of medical...
Total Ionizing Dose and Displacement Damage Effects on SiPM are standard required characterizations for applications of SiPM in every Nuclear, Space and Medical Instruments. The TIFPA-INFN Center in Trento (Italy) is equipped with two facilities, the Proton Experimental Area and the x-ray Irradiation Laboratory, where these characterizations can be performed with a proton beam and a x-rays...
The Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Krakow has two proton cyclotrons, the AIC-144 60 MeV cyclotron (designed and built at the IFJ PAN), and the IBA Proteus C-235 cyclotron, which produces a proton beam with an energy of 230 MeV mainly for proton radiotherapy.
The proton radiotherapy center (Cyclotron Centre Bronowice) at IFJ PAN is equipped with...
ChipIr is a beamline dedicated to the irradiation of microelectronics with atmospheric-like neutrons; it has been built on the second target station of the ISIS spallation source at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK. The beamline is specifically dedicated to the study of single event effects and its design is therefore optimized to extract a neutron spectrum as similar as possible to the...
Most of the astrophysics experiments use astro particle detectors comprising scintillators coupled large number of photomultipliers (either PMTs or SiPMs) to generate the electrical pulses corresponding to the detected particle. The performance of the detectors is strongly dependent to the parameters of each photodetector and therefore they have to be thoroughly and individually characterized...
Radiation damage of J-series SiPMs has been studied in the context of using these photodetectors in future space-borne scintillation detectors. Several SiPM samples were exposed to 101.4 MeV protons, with fluences ranging from 1.0e8 p/cm$^2$ (1 MeV neutron equivalent fluence of 1.3e8 neq/cm$^2$, absorbed dose of 9.8 rad) to 9.3e9 p/cm$^2$ (1.2e10 neq/cm$^2$, 908 rad). An increase in the dark...
We studied 200 MeV proton irradiation effects on Hamamatsu MPPCs (Si-PMs) in the Wakasa-wan Energy Research Center in Japan. Hamamatsu K.K. made test versions of MPPCs (S14420-3050MOD, S14160-3050MOD) and we studied these performances. As a result, dark current and lower energy threshold of modified MPPCs were comparable to the old one, and thus there were no significant improvements observed...
Study of Radiation Damage on FBK SiPMs
S. Merzi$^1$, F. Acerbi$^1$, A.R. Altamura$^1$, B. Di Ruzza$^2$, G. Haefeli$^3$, G. Paternoster$^1$, C. Trippl$^3$, A. Gola$^1$.
$^1$ Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), Sensors and Devices, Via Sommarive 18, 38123 Trento, Italy
$^2$ Trento Institute for Fundamental Physics and Applications (TIFPA-INFN), Via Sommarive 14, 38123 Trento, Italy
$^3$...
Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) are quickly replacing traditional photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) as the readout of choice for gamma-ray scintillation detectors in space. While they offer substantial size, weight and power saving, they have been shown to be susceptible to radiation damage. SiPM models from various manufacturers were irradiated with 64 MeV protons to simulate the radiation...
POLAR-2 is a polarimeter built to investigate the polarization of gamma-ray bursts in a cosmic space. The instrument will be launch in 2024 on board of the China Space Station and is therefore subject to background radiation from cosmic rays and solar flares. Contrary to its predecessor POLAR, where the scintillators were read-out using a multi-anode PMT, the plastic scintillators will be...
We studied annealing characteristic of Hamamatsu MPPCs (Si-PMs) in two ways after 200 MeV proton irradiation. First, we report the annealing characteristic after kept in room temperature during seven months. Second is baking at 150 degrees Celsius during 3 hours. In both cases, the increased dark current is reduced by 1/2-1/3.
The last decade has increasingly seen the use of silicon photomultipliers instead of photodetectors like photomultiplier tubes. This is due to various advantages of the former on the latter like the compactness, lower operating voltage, insensitivity to magnetic fields and mechanical robustness. All these features make silicon photomultipliers ideal for use on space based experiments where the...
SiPMs performance parameters such as dark count rate, the average number of detected photons, cross-talk and after-pulsing, gain and gain fluctuations, are usually extracted from
the pulse-height spectra obtained in the dark or response to low-intensity light illumination.
This method works for non-irradiated SiPMs. The most critical effect of radiation on SiPMs is the increase...
The Mu3e experiment at PSI is designed to search for the CLFV decay $µ^+→e^+e^+e^−$ with a sensitivity of $10^{-16}$. To reduce the combinatorial background from muon decays while efficiently identifying 3-electron final states, a scintillating-tile detector with a required timing resolution < 100 ps and efficiency close to 100% is under development.
The Irradiation damage of SiPMs to be...
Mu3e is a novel experiment under preparation at PSI searching for lepton flavor violation in the neutrinoless $\mu \rightarrow eee$ decay. To suppress accidental backgrounds a scintillating fiber timing detector read out with multi-channel SiPM arrays at both ends has been developed. The SiPM arrays will be exposed to a very high flux of low energy positrons (E ∼ 10 to 50 MeV) from $\mu$...
A single SiPM Hamamatsu S13360-6050PE was irradiated with an isotopic Cf-252 source at the NIST Californium Neutron Irradiation Facility (CNIF) to evaluate damage for the POLAR-2 polarimeter, as a first approach to evaluate the damage produced by atmospheric neutrons in space. The source has a diameter of 7.7 mm and its activity at the time of the irradiation was 1.688 x $10^7$ neutrons per...
The LHCb SciFi (Scintillating fibre) Tracker with an active area of 320~$m^2$ features over 500'000 SiPM channels in a high radiation environment. Unlike other SiPM applications exposed to radiation, the SciFi SiPM is required to provide single photon amplitude resolution throughout the detector lifetime. With a light yield of 18~pe decreasing to 12~pe over the lifetime of the detector, low...
We measured 200 MeV proton damages on Hamamatsu MPPCs (Si-PMs), S13360-6050CS and S14160-6050HS, using the Wakasa Wan Energy Resarch Center in Japan. To achieve the lower energy threshold of CsI(Tl) with the damaged MPPCs, we measured the performances at different operation voltages and temperatures. The lower operational voltage is preferred due to the large increase of the dark current. The...
Gravitational wave high-energy Electromagnetic Counterpart All-sky Monitor (GECAM) is an all-sky monitor composed of two microsatellites launched in Dec. 2020. Each GECAM satellite is equiped with 25 SiPM-based gamma-ray detectors (GRD) and 8 SiPM-based charged particle detectors (CPD). Due to the anomalies in the satellite power supply, only one satellite (GECAM-B) can observe about 10 hours...
The main effect of radiation damage in a Silicon-Photolumtiplier (SiPM) is a dramatic increase in the dark current. The power dissipated, if not properly cooled, heats the SiPM, whose performance parameters depend on temperature. Heating studies were performed with a KETEK SiPM, glued on an alumina substrate, which is either directly connected to a temperature-controlled chuck of a probe...
The Gravitational Wave Electromagnetic Counterpart All-sky Monitor (GECAM) was launched on December 10, 2020 (Beijing Time). It is composed of two microsatellites and each GECAM satellite consists of 25 SiPM-based gamma-ray detectors (GRDs) and 8 SiPM-based charged particle detectors (CPDs). The in-flight background of GRD mainly consists of cosmic X-ray background, SAA proton activated LaBr3...
Silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) has recently been used in several space-borne missions for scintillator readout, thanks to its solid state, compact size, low operating voltage and insensitivity to magnetic fields. However, a known issue of operating SiPM in space environment is the radiation damage and thus the performance degradation. In-orbit quantitative study of these effects is still very...
Due to the plethora of SiPM types, instrument configurations and their respective orbital operations it is sometimes very difficult to easily characterize the origin of “SiPM radiation damage features”. Even more so, it can be difficult to translate the results from another group/collaboration into something useful for yourself.
Here I will introduce a wiki, currently hosted by the...
The Gamma-ray Burst Localizing Instrument (GALI) is a new concept for localizing γ-ray bursts (GRBs), by utilizing the mutual occultation between numerous small scintillators. In a sense, the method is similar to the coded mask aperture, only that the mask itself is composed of detecting scintillators, so that most of the photons are being detected. The large number of scintillators...
Terzina is a satellite base Cherenkov telescope designed to operate at ~535 km altitude with sun-synchronous orbit. Its primary goal is to probe the new concept of detecting ultra high energy cosmic rays and neutrinos by observing Cherenkov light from an extensive shower produced in the atmosphere. It is part of the NUSES space mission with a wide scientific program. Also, the mission includes...
The Cosmic X-ray Background (CXB) dominate the X-ray fluxes over the sky, as it is believed to be a superposition of numerous discrete sources, which are primarily Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs). The CXB intensity therefore offers an unique probe to study the AGN population. Limited by background modeling and (cross) calibration issues, the uncertainty of the CXB measurements remain currently...
MoonBEAM and StarBurst are two novel SmallSat designs for missions in the field of gamma-ray astronomy. Given their size constraints, these types of spacecraft highly favor the use of SiPMs over PMTs in their scintillation-based detector designs. However, the one major problem for SiPM detector designs is operational lifetime given that SiPM power draw increases significantly with radiation...
Neutrons and γ-rays are produced throughout the heliosphere and offer a unique window to understanding the fundamental processes of energetic particles. At the Sun, because neutrons and γ rays are produced by the interaction of accelerated ions in solar eruptive events, they can further our understanding of space-weather agents, processes and effects. Neutron measurements from 20-150 MeV...
In this talk I discuss three proposed space-based missions covering a variety of astroparticle physics science topics: the AMEGO-X MIDEX-class all-sky medium-energy gamma-ray telescope, the TIGERISS Pioneers-class cosmic-ray telescope for measuring nuclear abundances over a very wide range of charges, and the developing GECCO concept combining a Compton telescope with a deployable coded mask...
