Characterisation of HEPAPS4—A family of CMOS active pixel sensors for charged particle detection

Abstract

Monolithic active pixel sensor technology is a relatively inexpensive and reliable alternative to that of CCDs. Potential scientific applications for these devices include charged particle detection, indirect X-rays and neutron imaging. This paper reports on the characterisation and timing parameters optimisation of three different sensor variants from the HEPAPS4 family. The sensors feature standard three nMOS design but differ in the implementation of the photosensitive element. They have an array of 1024 × 384 pixels of 15 × 15 μ m 2 and 20 μ m epi-layer. Photonic methods are used to measure conversion gain, linearity, signal to noise ratio, dynamic range, pixel to pixel uniformity, dark current and read noise.