Sensor technology strategy in silicon

Abstract Despite the many years of research in the silicon sensor field and the continuously growing effort, very little commercial success has been obtained so far. This is largely due to the problems encountered in transferring the technology involved from the research laboratory to industry for production. In order to ease this problem, compatibility with integrated circuit processing must be preserved while developing process flows for integrated silicon sensors. In this paper a possible strategy, which meets the compatibility issue without compromising too much the flexibility, is discussed. This approach relies on the development of so-called ‘closed’ process modules which can be added at some point of the integrated circuit process, without causing any change in the characteristics of the electronics. The advantages of such an approach are illustrated through typical examples.

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