A CMOS Current-Mode Active Pixel Sensor for High Energy Physics and Biomedical Imaging Applications

Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) using standard low cost CMOS technology available from industrial manufacturers have demonstrated excellent tracking performances for minimum ionizing particles and biomedical imaging applications. The need for highly granular, fast, thin sensor drives an R&D effort, aiming to optimize the intrinsic sensor performances. Following this main issue, we present a design of PhotoFET using CMOS submicron technology in this paper. This structure integrates advantageously an amplification using PMOS transistor inside the sensing element. This provides to the sensing element a high sensitivity to ionizing particles and a large dynamic range. The proposed PhotoFET has been implemented with a standard 0.35 mum CMOS process. In this paper, the PhotoFET architecture is presented and the main measured results are shown.