Vertically integrated monolithic pixel sensors for charged particle tracking and biomedical imaging

Three-dimensional monolithic pixel sensors have been designed following the same approach that was exploited for the development of the so-called deep N-well (DNW) MAPS in planar CMOS process. The new 3D design relies upon stacking two homogeneous layers fabricated in a 130 nm CMOS technology. One of the two tiers, which are face-to-face bonded, has to be thinned down to about 12 mu m to expose the through silicon vias connecting the circuits to the back-metal bond pads. As a consequence of the way the two parts of each single chip are designed and fabricated, the prototypes of the 3D monolithic detector will include both samples with a thick substrate underneath the collecting DNW electrode, suitable for charged particle tracking, and samples with a very thin (about 6 mu m) sensitive volume, which may be used to detect low energy particles in biomedical imaging applications. Device physics simulations have been performed to evaluate the collection properties and detection efficiency of the proposed vertically integrated structures. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.