RETRACTED: <i>Characterization of a New Silicon Photomultiplier in Comparison with a Conventional Photomultiplier Tube</i>

Abstract

A Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) array (ArraySM-4p9) from the SensL Inc. has been evaluated in this study. The current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of individual SiPM pixels were measured. Then the energy spectral performances of this SiPM array were evaluated with different scintillator samples as compared with a conventional PMT of Hamamatsu 878. The used scintillator samples include GAGG: Ce (3 × 3 × 6 mm 3 ), CsI (TI) (3 × 3 × 6 mm 3 ), and LYSO (2 × 2 × 5 mm 3 ). The energy spectra of these scintillator samples with a SiPM pixel were measured using gamma-ray sources of 57 Co (122 keV), 22 Na (511 keV) and 137 Cs (662 keV) and were compared with the conventional PMT. The measured I-V curves of this SiPM device have shown good performance uniformity over the 4 × 4 SiPM array units. The channel-to-channel variations of the 16 SiPM pixels in the breakdown voltages, gains and dark currents are very consistent and stable. Gamma spectroscopy using 57 Co, 22 Na and 137 Cs sources shows that this SiPM device has well comparable spectral performance as the conventional PMT. The SiPM with CsI (Tl) and GAGG: Ce crystals using 57 Co source show significant better energy resolutions than the conventional photomultiplier tube (PMT) for the low energy gamma-ray detections. Finally, the newly available SiPMs show very good properties and are well suited with most common used scintillation crystals for gamma-ray detections in a broad energy range. The SiPM has a great promise to replace the conventional PMT.

TEMPERATURE STABILIZATION OF SiPM-BASED GAMMA-RADIATION SCINTILLATION DETECTORS

“…Figure 6. Dependence of the energy resolution at 662 keV on temperature without (1,3,5,7) and with using (2,4,6,7) the stabilization scheme measured with the different detectors: 1, 2 -BGO Ø12.5 mm × 50 mm, 3, 4 -BGO Ø6 mm × 10 mm, 5, 6 -CsI(Tl) Ø12.0 mm × 50 mm, 7, 8 -CsI (Tl) Ø6 mm × 10 mm.…”

“…Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are good alternatives to traditional photomultiplier tubes for application in the scintillation detectors used to convert optical signals to electrical ones and to amplify them to measured values [1,2].…”

Hard X-ray Polarimetry -- An overview of the method, science drivers and recent findings

“…Though SiPMs have been mostly used at higher energies (Bloser et al, 2013;Sanaei et al, 2015), lower energy (20 − 80 keV) application of SiPMs was demonstrated only recently during CXPOL experiment (Chattopadhyay et al, 2015) to readout CsI(Tl) scintillators with SiPM PM3350 from KETEK 7 . One major issue of SiPMs is the high background level (∼500 kHz/mm 2 ), therefore use of SiPMs at lower energies requires very good light collection at the SiPM which will depend on the scintillator light output and decay time constant.…”

Development of a hard x-ray focal plane compton polarimeter: a compact polarimetric configuration with scintillators and Si photomultipliers

“…One major problem with SiPM is the constant leakage current resulting from the random firing of micro-pixles due to thermal and field excitations inside Si, which makes it difficult for lower energy applications. At energies beyond 100 kev, SiPM device has been proved to be a much better readout option for scintillators than conventional vacuum PMTs [7,43]. Here we plan to use SiPM to read out CsI(Tl) crystals at energies below 100 kev, which essentially depends on many factors like background level in the SiPM (typically ≤ 500 kHz/mm 2 ), good coupling between the crystal and SiPM, lower electronic noise, and on the scintillator properties (good light collection efficiency and small decay constant).…”