Fabrication and characterization of a 500-μm-pitch 64-channel silicon photomultiplier prototype

Abstract A novel 500- μ m-pitch silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) array designed to provide one-to-one coupling of finely separated scintillator arrays is presented. In addition to its weak scintillation light detection capability, the SiPM’s low fabrication cost and easy handling are great advantages over traditional photomultiplier tubes for future medical tomography systems. In particular, the SiPM’s compactness is one of its most attractive features for satisfying the high-resolution and counting rate requirements in energy-resolvable X-ray photon counting computed tomography. To this end, a 500- μ m-pitch 64-channel SiPM array prototype was fabricated and its basic performance was evaluated. Measurement results showed several useful features such as a recovery time of 8 ns and a gain of 1 × 1 0 6 .