Speaker
Description
MiniCactus ASICs are series of demonstrators intended to study the timing performance that can be obtained from non-amplified large electrode sensors developed with the 150 nm HV-CMOS process from LFoundry. The long-term goal is to provide a timing sensor with performances compatible with LHC timing detector upgrades, to be considered post LHC phase 2. An evolution of MiniCactus could be a candidate for the replacement of the ATLAS HGTD inner disks.
The most recent development is MiniCactus v2 which features pixels of different sizes, from 1 mm x 1 mm to 0.5 mm x 0.5mm. These are equipped with different types of analog individual front-end and discriminators, with bias parameters and thresholds programmable via an integrated slow control. The latest testbeams carried out have shown an excellent timing resolution of 50 ps for pixels of 0.5 mm x 0.5 mm.
A solution to improve the timing performance is to implement directly, inside the sensor, a charge multiplication layer in the form of a PN junction (DJ-LGAD concept). A first prototype with no-electronics have been successfully designed and first tests have shown charge multiplication. Encouraged by these results, a new prototype with tailored electronics is being designed.
This talk will present the status and plans for MiniCactus, including the most recent results of MiniCactus v2 testbeams and the first results of the pixels with gain.