title: Advances in CMOS Solid-state Photomultipliers for Scintillation Detector Applications.
abstract: Solid-state photomultipliers (SSPMs) are a compact, lightweight, potentially low-cost alternative to a photomultiplier tube for a variety of scintillation detector applications, including digital-dosimeter and medical-imaging applications. Manufacturing SSPMs with a commercial CMOS process provides the ability for rapid prototyping, and facilitates production to reduce the cost. RMD designs CMOS SSPM devices that are fabricated by commercial foundries. This work describes the characterization and performance of these devices for scintillation detector applications. This work also describes the terms contributing to device noise in terms of the excess noise of the SSPM, the binomial statistics governing the number of pixels triggered by a scintillation event, and the background, or thermal, count rate. The fluctuations associated with these terms limit the resolution of the signal pulse amplitude. We explore the use of pixel-level signal conditioning, and characterize the performance of a prototype SSPM device that preserves the digital nature of the signal. In addition, we explore designs of position-sensitive SSPM detectors for medical imaging applications, and characterize their performance.
authors.affiliation: Radiation Monitoring Devices, 44 Hunt Street, Watertownm MA 02472 USA.
authors.forename: James F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Christian
authors.affiliation: Radiation Monitoring Devices, 44 Hunt Street, Watertownm MA 02472 USA.
authors.forename: Christopher J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Stapels
authors.affiliation: Radiation Monitoring Devices, 44 Hunt Street, Watertownm MA 02472 USA.
authors.forename: Erik B
authors.initials: EB
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.affiliation: Radiation Monitoring Devices, 44 Hunt Street, Watertownm MA 02472 USA.
authors.forename: Mickel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: McClish
authors.affiliation: Radiation Monitoring Devices, 44 Hunt Street, Watertownm MA 02472 USA.
authors.forename: Purushotthom
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dokhale
authors.affiliation: Radiation Monitoring Devices, 44 Hunt Street, Watertownm MA 02472 USA.
authors.forename: Kanai S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Shah
authors.affiliation: Radiation Monitoring Devices, 44 Hunt Street, Watertownm MA 02472 USA.
authors.forename: Sharmistha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mukhopadhyay
authors.affiliation: Radiation Monitoring Devices, 44 Hunt Street, Watertownm MA 02472 USA.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Chapman
authors.affiliation: Augustine Engineering, 2115 Park Dale Ln, Encinitas, CA 92024, USA.
authors.forename: Frank L
authors.initials: FL
authors.lastname: Augustine
keywords: APD; CMOS; GPD; Photodetector; Scintillation detector; Solid-state Photomultiplier