Detection limit of a VCO based detection chain dedicated to particles recognition and tracking

Abstract

Abstract-A particle detection chain based on CMOS-SOI VCO circuit is presented. The solution is used for the recognition and the tracking of a given particle at circuit level. TCAD simulation of the detector has been performed on a 3x3 matrix of diodes based detector for particles recognition and tracking. The current response of the detector has been used for a case study in order to determine the ability of the chain to recognize an alpha particle crossing a 3x3 detection cell. The detection limit of the proposed solution is investigated and discussed in this paper.

Particle Identification and Tracking by the Use of a Pixel-Based Semiconductor Radiation Detector Coupled with Voltage Controlled Oscillators

“…The highest current, on the left, corresponds to the highest electron density and the lowest current, on the right, corresponds to the lowest charge density. These results, coming from the simulation of a 3x3 matrix presented in [19], show that the current variation can provide an information about the charge density in the detection cell.…”

“…In [19], it was also shown that the current shape can also give information about the distance between the charge generation and the contact. Indeed, for a contact located just above the ion, the current peak will appear earlier than for contacts located further from the generation point.…”

“…This corresponds to the horizontal strike of an alpha particle presented in Fig. 5 [19]. The cut is in the direction perpendicular to the particle path.…”

“…In a previous work, we demonstrated that several metrics can be used but we decide to mainly focus on the variation of the average output signal (ΔVmax) versus the maximum of the input current (Imax). In [19], a linearity curve linking input to output parameters was determined for the 4.3 GHz VCO studied here. The curve which characterizes the VCO response is named « calibration curve ».…”

“…The horizontal configuration has been extensively studied in [19] so we will focus on the diagonal configuration. Fig.…”