Disseny Microelectrònic I

Continguts temàtics corresponents a l'assignatura `Disseny Microelectrònic I', impartida a l'ensenyament d'Enginyeria Electrònica de la Universitat de Barcelona, i presentats de manera independent en format d'article tècnic. El text s'organitza en articles obligatoris, imprescindibles pel correcte seguiment de l'assignatura, i articles d'ampliació, pensats per aquells alumnes que desitgin aprofundir els seus coneixements. A més, tot plegat es complementa amb una col·lecció de problemes resolts que, juntament amb la resta de material de classe, pretén servir tant pels alumnes de l'assignatura com per aquelles persones que pretenguin conèixer o revisar algun dels aspectes que s'hi tracten

A System-on-Chip solution for a low power active capsule endoscope with therapeutic capabilities for clip application in the gastrointestinal tract

This paper addresses the circuit implementation challenges resulting from the integration of a therapeutic clip in a magnetically maneuverable wireless capsule intended for colonoscopy. To deal with the size constraints typical of a capsule endoscope, an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) has been designed specifically to habilitate the release of the therapeutic clip. The ASIC is a complete System on Chip (SoC) that incorporates a circuit for the low power release of the clip, thus overcoming the limitations of the power supply system. With a size of 14mm2, the ASIC can be incorporated in practically any capsule endoscope, consuming only an idle-state power of 1.5mW

High dynamic range diamond detector acquisition system for beam wire scanner applications

The CERN Beam Instrumentation group has been working during the last years on the beam wire scanners upgrade to cope up with the increasing requirements of CERN experiments. These devices are used to measure the beam profile by crossing a thin wire through a circulating beam, the resulting secondary particles produced from beam/wire interaction are detected and correlated with the wire position to reconstruct the beam profile. The upgraded secondary particles acquisition electronics will use polycrystalline chemical vapour deposition (pCVD) diamond detectors for particle shower measurements, with low noise acquisitions performed on the tunnel, near the detector. The digital data is transmitted to the surface through an optical link with the GBT protocol. Two integrator ASICs (ICECAL and QIE10) are being characterized and compared for detector readout with the complete acquisition chain prototype. This contribution presents the project status, the QIE10 front-end performance and the first measurements with the complete acquisition system prototype. In addition, diamond detector signals from particle showers generated by an operational beam wire scanner are analysed and compared with an operational system

Time resolution and radiation tolerance of depleted CMOS sensors

Depleted Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (DMAPS), also known as depleted CMOS sensors, are extremely attractive for particle physics experiments. As the sensing diode and readout electronics can be integrated on the same silicon substrate, DMAPS remove the need for hybridization. This results in thin detectors with reduced production time and costs. To achieve high speed and high radiation tolerance, DMAPS are manufactured in High Voltage (HV) processes on High Resistivity (HR) wafers. Today's most performant DMAPS are 50 μm thin and have 50 μm x 50 μm cell size with integrated mixed analog and digital readout electronics, 11 ns time resolution and 5 x 1015 1 MeV neq/cm2 radiation tolerance. DMAPS in HR/HV-CMOS have been adopted as the sensor technology for the pixel tracker for the Mu3e experiment and are under consideration for the ATLAS detector Phase-II Upgrade. However, in spite of the major improvements demonstrated by DMAPS, further research to achieve even more performant sensors is needed to realize the full potential of these sensors to meet the most challenging requirements for particle physics experiments planned for the future. This article describes the state-of-the-art of DMAPS in terms of time resolution and radiation tolerance, and presents specific work done by the CERNRD50 collaboration to further develop the performance of these sensors

Operational experience and commissioning of the Belle II vertex detector

The construction of the new accelerator at the Super Flavor Factory in Tsukuba, Japan, has been finalized and the commissioning of its detector (Belle II) has started. This new e+e machine (SuperKEKB) will deliver an instantaneous luminosity of 8 1035 cm2s1, which is 40 times higher than the world record set by KEKB. In order to be able to fully exploit the increased number of events and provide high precision measurements of the decay vertex of the B meson systems in such a harsh environment, the Belle II detector will include a new 6 layer silicon vertex detector. Close to the beam pipe, 2 pixel and 4 double-sided strip detector layers will be installed. During its first data taking period in 2018, the inner volume of the Belle II detector was only partially equipped with the final vertex detector technologies. The remaining volume was covered with dedicated radiation monitors, collectively called BEAST II, in order to investigate the particle and synchrotron radiation backgrounds near the interaction point. In this note, the milestones of the commissioning of the Belle II vertex detector and BEAST II are reviewed and the detector performance and selected background measurements will be presented

A Compact raster lensless microscope based on a microdisplay

Lensless microscopy requires the simplest possible configuration, as it uses only a light source, the sample and an image sensor. The smallest practical microscope is demonstrated here. In contrast to standard lensless microscopy, the object is located near the lighting source. Raster optical microscopy is applied by using a single-pixel detector and a microdisplay. Maximum resolution relies on reduced LED size and the position of the sample respect the microdisplay. Contrarily to other sort of digital lensless holographic microscopes, light backpropagation is not required to reconstruct the images of the sample. In a mm-high microscope, resolutions down to 800 nm have been demonstrated even when measuring with detectors as large as 138 μm × 138 μm, with field of view given by the display size. Dedicated technology would shorten measuring time

ChipScope Symposium: Novel Approaches for a Chip-Sized Optical Microscope

In the Chipscope project funded by the EU, a completely new strategy towards optical microscopy is explored by a team of researchers from different European institutions. In this workshop, the different researchers of the project will explain the last advances obtained in the project, presenting the microscopes, how light emission is produced, and the detection principles and simulations

Active gating as a method to inhibit the crosstalk of Single Photon Avalanche Diodes in a shared well

This work presents low noise readout circuits for silicon pixel detectors based on Geiger mode avalanche photodiodes. Geiger mode avalanche photodiodes offer a high intrinsic gain as well as an excellent timing accuracy. In addition, they can be compatible with standard CMOS technologies. However, they suffer from a high intrinsic noise, which induces false counts indistinguishable from real events and represents an increase of the readout electronics area to store the false counts. We have developed new front-end electronic circuitry for Geiger mode avalanche photodiodes in a conventional 0.35 µm HV-CMOS technology based on a gated mode of operation that allows low noise operation. The performance of the pixel detector is triggered and synchronized with the particle beam thanks to the gated acquisition. The circuits allow low reverse bias overvoltage operation which also improves the noise figures. Experimental characterization of the fabricated front-end circuit is presented in this work

A Point-of-Care Device for Molecular Diagnosis Based on CMOS SPAD Detectors with Integrated Microfluidics

We describe the integration of techniques and technologies to develop a Point-of-Care for molecular diagnosis PoC-MD, based on a fluorescence lifetime measurement. Our PoC-MD is a low-cost, simple, fast, and easy-to-use general-purpose platform, aimed at carrying out fast diagnostics test through label detection of a variety of biomarkers. It is based on a 1-D array of 10 ultra-sensitive Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) detectors made in a 0.18 μm High-Voltage Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (HV-CMOS) technology. A custom microfluidic polydimethylsiloxane cartridge to insert the sample is straightforwardly positioned on top of the SPAD array without any alignment procedure with the SPAD array. Moreover, the proximity between the sample and the gate-operated SPAD sensor makes unnecessary any lens or optical filters to detect the fluorescence for long lifetime fluorescent dyes, such as quantum dots. Additionally, the use of a low-cost laser diode as pulsed excitation source and a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to implement the control and processing electronics, makes the device flexible and easy to adapt to the target label molecule by only changing the laser diode. Using this device, reliable and sensitive real-time proof-of-concept fluorescence lifetime measurement of quantum dot QdotTM 605 streptavidin conjugate is demonstrated

Characterization of linear-mode avalanche photodiodes in standard CMOS

Linear-mode Avalanche PhotoDiodes (APDs) can be fabricated in standard CMOS processes for obtaining high multiplication gains that allow to determine the number of incident photons with great precision. This idea can be exploited in several application domains, such as image sensors, optical communications and quantum information. In this work, we present a linear-mode APD fabricated in a 0.35 µm CMOS process and report its noise and gain characterization by means of two different experimental set-ups. Good matching is observed between the results obtained by means of the two different methods