SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Silicon-based sensors are central to particle physics experiments and particle tracking detectors. Nuclear Physics (NP) end users have a growing need for particle tracking devices with 1) improved tracking and timing resolution, 2) faster speed to limit event pileup, 3) lower mass detector to minimize electron scattering, leakage, and trapping distance, 4) better substrate depletion to reduce collection time, 5) high radiation tolerance, and 6) lower power and lower fabrication cost. NHanced proposes to develop a low mass 3D-Advanced Hybrid Sensor (AHS) that will achieve picosecond timing resolutions and micrometer scale spatial resolution. The device will also provide angular resolution within a single layer detector – no other existing technology can do this. We propose to use our in-house 3D assembly technology (DBI®) to integrate a fast ReadOut IC (ROIC) tier to an ultra- low mass particle detector tier that will be fabricated in our wholly-owned fab in NC. Our 3D technology allows us to connect any type of detector to our ROIC in LEGO®-like fashion, creating a family of products to serve a wide variety of applications relevant to NP end users: low material, low mass sensors with excellent timing and tracking capabilities. Our proposed product and technology enable us to achieve performances that outrun all competing technologies on almost every aspect. Our product offers timing resolution performance similar to LGAD, but without its radiation tolerance limitations, and spatial resolution similar to SOI-MAPS/MAPS without its dead time, slow readout speed, or charge drifts. This effort led to extremely encouraging results. Our 3D technology allows us to connect any type of sensor to our ROIC. With that in mind, we performed twenty 3D-AHS prototype configurations including ten detector versions (five thicknesses and two pixel sizes) and four ROIC versions. We successfully demonstrated our capability to integrate a fast ROIC with ultra-low mass, fully depleted detectors, thus allowing excellent timing and tracking capabilities. Some prototype design versions demonstrated ultra- low power consumption – potentially low enough that slow air flow cooling could be used, thus further reducing the overall mass of the whole system. Our technology primarily targets the silicon sensors commonly used for industry, medicine, and research science. The world market for silicon photosensors is expected to exceed $17 billion by 2022. The market niche for non-visual sensors accounts for about 1-2% of that, with a comfortable growth of +5% CAGR over the next 5 years. We estimate the market portion that would benefit from our technology to be roughly $170M in 2022.
