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Die Analyse von Mikropartikeln hat in Medizin, Biologie und Chemie eine große Bedeutung. Neue Analysesysteme sollen per Drucktechnologie hergestellt werden. Unter diesem Hinblick werden in dieser Arbeit neuartige optische Partikeldetektionssysteme auf Basis von Mikrofluidik und planaren Optiken entwickelt und untersucht. Da sich die Funktionsweise von etablierten Partikeldetektionssystemen deutlich unterscheidet, erfolgt eine detaillierte Untersuchung der Signaleigenschaften und Fehlerstatistik.

International audience; A way of improvement of an oscillator concept, dedicated to detection and tracking of low energy particles with low fluxes, is presented. The solution is based on an indirect detection of the current generated at the input of the detection chain, through a VCO response. In order to improve the correlation between the input current and the oscillator response, a new way of VCO implementation is proposed. The new output parameter variations are analyzed

Particle free handling of EUV reticles is a major concern in industry. For reaching economically feasible yield levels, it is reported that Particle-per-Reticle-Pass (PRP) levels should be better than 0.0001 for particles larger than 18 nm. Such cleanliness levels are yet to be reported for current reticle handling systems. A reticle handler was built based on a modular concept with three uniform linked base frames. In the first stage of the project a dual pod loading unit, two exchange units for opening inner pods and a reticle flip unit are installed on the base frames. In the near future improvements on cleanliness will be tested and particle detection equipment will be integrated. The system will act as a testing platform for clean handling technology for industry. © 2014 SPIE.

Particle free handling of EUV reticles is a major concern in industry. For reaching economically feasible yield levels, it is reported that Particle-per-Reticle-Pass (PRP) levels should be better than 0.0001 for particles larger than 18 nm. Such cleanliness levels are yet to be reported for current reticle handling systems. A reticle handler was built based on a modular concept with three uniform linked base frames. In the first stage of the project a dual pod loading unit, two exchange units for opening inner pods and a reticle flip unit are installed on the base frames. In the near future improvements on cleanliness will be tested and particle detection equipment will be integrated. The system will act as a testing platform for clean handling technology for industry. © 2014 SPIE.

In this work two microfluidic devices based on microchannels combined with micrometric capacitive sensors are proposed. The devices are intended to sense flow discontinuities and detect particles with size in the tens of microns passing through the sensing section. In these devices the sensing electrodes are insulated from the fluid thereby preventing sample contamination. In the experimental tests the devices demonstrate the ability to detect flow discontinuities such as microbubbles and clusters of cells. The obtained results are promising to extend the proposed sensors to biological measurements such as counting and sizing of particles or cells in biological samples.

7 pages; International audience; For the solar system exploration and the distant universe study, the in-situ particle energy measurement and/or the electron/ion event detection are needed. For our on-board satellite application, the particle sensor that is used to convert particle momentum into measurable electrical charges is a Microchannel plate (MCP). The performances of such a sensor depend on the Analog-Front-End (AFE) circuit used to process the incoming charges. Consequently, a CMOS instrumentation chain for charged particle detection has been designed and tested under space environment. This AFE contains 16 channels, all of which includes a charge pre-amplifier (CPA), a pulse shaper (PS) and a monostable circuit to perform the detection. Using a standard 0.35 μm CMOS process, the proposed AFE has a conversion gain of 0.9mV/fC for electrons and a power consumption of 2.15 mW per channel. Its dynamic range is 79 dB and it is possible to convert charges up to 1.5 pC. The circuit works properly from -20 to 80°C with a measured analog gain variation of 1μV.fC-1.K-1. As far as crosstalk is concerned, experiments show that the proposed instrumentation chain can detect negative charges down to 122 fC without any ambiguity. Further, the proposed chain was irradiated at an average rate of 140 rads (Si) per hour up to 360 krad without any functionality loss.

Contemporary particle accelerators for fundamental research in particle physics like Fermilab's Tevatron and CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) provide researchers with higher and higher luminosities. This sets the pace for the need for radiation hard detector materials for both beamline instrumentation and the physics experiments themselves. Silicon pixel and silicon microstrip detectors are well developed devices for tracking applications in these high-energy physics experiments. However, these detectors are expected to reach the end of their lifetime within a few years due to their exposure to harsh radiation, of which the yearly level amounts to up to several 1014 hadrons/cm2 during the foreseen 10 years of operation in the case of LHC experiments. In order to protect sensitive experimental devices from adverse beam conditions, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond, an artificially generated diamond material, is more and more being used in systems called Beam Condition Monitors (BCM). The radiation level these sensors are exposed to is even higher than in the case of position sensitive tracking detectors. An example are the CVD diamond sensors of the BCM of the LHCb experiment at CERN, which is meant to withstand 1015 hadrons/cm2 during 10 years. Preparation of CVD diamond sensors for BCM applications are discussed in detail, together with the properties of this new material as a candidate for position sensitive devices in high energy physics experiments, addressing also operational questions like the appearance of erratic dark currents in polycrystalline diamond bulks. Other new materials for position sensitive devices such as CdZnTe and CdTe are discussed as well and compared to the well established silicon, together with a compilation of their properties relevant to particle detection. Recent advances in the field of passive radiation monitors, where thermoluminescent sensors made from lithium fluoride now cover a dynamic range from several µGy up to 105Gy, are also discussed briefly.

With the development of mechanical fault diagnosis technology, complex mechanical systems do not need to be shut down periodically for the maintenance. The working condition of the mechanical systems can be monitored by analyzing the wear metal particles in the systems' lubricating oil. However, the output signals of the monitoring sensor are non-stationary. In some case the particle signals are overlapped with each other. The goal of this thesis is to find a method to decompose those overlapped particle signals, and then count the particle number in the lubricating oil. At the beginning EMD method was introduced in the experiment because of the character of the sensor signals. In this project, because EMD method is sensitive to the noise in the original signals, an improved version of EMD, EEMD method was implemented. Finally, a post processing method was used to get a better result.

A new type of scintillation detector is being developed with standard microfabrication techniques. It consists of a dense array of scintillating waveguides obtained by coupling microfluidic channels filled with a liquid scintillator to photodetectors. Easy manipulation of liquid scintillators inside microfluidic devices allow their flushing, renewal, and exchange making the active medium intrinsically radiation hard. Prototype detectors have been fabricated by photostructuration of a radiation hard epoxy resin (SU-8) deposited on silicon wafers and coupled to a multi-anode photomultiplier tube (MAPMT) to read-out the scintillation light. They have been characterized by exciting the liquid scintillator in the 200 micrometers thick microchannels with electrons from a Sr-90 yielding approximately 1 photoelectron per impinging Minimum Ionizing Particle (MIP). These promising results demonstrate the concept of microfluidic scintillating detection and are very encouraging for future developments.

Since 2006 EUV Lithographic tools have been available for testing purposes giving a boost to the development of fab infrastructure for EUV masks. The absence of a pellicle makes the EUV reticles extremely vulnerable to particles. Therefore, the fab infrastructure for masks must meet very strict particle requirements. It is expected that all new equipment must be qualified on particles before it can be put into operation. This qualification requirement increases the need for a low cost method for particle detection on mask substrates. TNO developed its fourth generation particle scanner, the Rapid Nano. This scanner is capable of detecting nanometer sized particles on flat surfaces. The particle detection is based on dark field imaging techniques and fast image processing. The tool was designed for detection of a single added particle in a handling experiment over a reticle sized substrate. Therefore, the Rapid Nano is very suitable for the validation of particle cleanliness of equipment. During the measurement, the substrate is protected against particle contamination by placing it in a protective environment. This environment shields the substrate from all possible contamination source in the Nano Rapid (stages, elevator, cabling). The imaging takes place through a window in the protective cover. The geometry of the protective environment enables large flexibility in substrate shape and size. Particles can be detected on substrates varying from 152 x 152 mm mask substrates to wafers up to 200 mm. PSL particles of 50 nm were detected with signal noise ratio of 26. Larger particles had higher signal noise ratios. By individually linking particles in two measurements the addition of particles can be detected. These results show that the Rapid Nano is capable of detecting particles of 50 nm and larger of a full reticle substrate. © 2011 Copyright Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).

Since 2006 EUV Lithographic tools have been available for testing purposes giving a boost to the development of fab infrastructure for EUV masks. The absence of a pellicle makes the EUV reticles extremely vulnerable to particles. Therefore, the fab infrastructure for masks must meet very strict particle requirements. It is expected that all new equipment must be qualified on particles before it can be put into operation. This qualification requirement increases the need for a low cost method for particle detection on mask substrates. TNO developed its fourth generation particle scanner, the Rapid Nano. This scanner is capable of detecting nanometer sized particles on flat surfaces. The particle detection is based on dark field imaging techniques and fast image processing. The tool was designed for detection of a single added particle in a handling experiment over a reticle sized substrate. Therefore, the Rapid Nano is very suitable for the validation of particle cleanliness of equipment. During the measurement, the substrate is protected against particle contamination by placing it in a protective environment. This environment shields the substrate from all possible contamination source in the Nano Rapid (stages, elevator, cabling). The imaging takes place through a window in the protective cover. The geometry of the protective environment enables large flexibility in substrate shape and size. Particles can be detected on substrates varying from 152 x 152 mm mask substrates to wafers up to 200 mm. PSL particles of 50 nm were detected with signal noise ratio of 26. Larger particles had higher signal noise ratios. By individually linking particles in two measurements the addition of particles can be detected. These results show that the Rapid Nano is capable of detecting particles of 50 nm and larger of a full reticle substrate. © 2011 Copyright Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).

This paper presents the results of the characterisation of a pixel sensor manufactured in 0.2 μ m SOI technology integrated on a high-resistivity substrate, and featuring several pixel cell layouts for charge collection optimisation. The sensor is tested with short IR laser pulses, X-rays and 200 GeV pions. We report results on charge collection, particle detection efficiency and single point resolution.

High-spin states in 73Kr were studied at the XTU tandem accelerator of the Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro using the reaction 40Ca(40 Ca,2pn) at a beam energy of 185 MeV. Gamma rays were detected with the EUROBALL spectrometer. Particle detection enabled us to identify the reaction channel leading to 73Kr. The yrast bands of positive and negative parity were established up to probable spins of 61/2+ and 63/2- , respectively. The energies of the two identified bands agree well with the predictions of the configuration-dependent Cranked Nilsson-Strutinsky approximation and indicate that the nucleus remains collective up to the maximum spins of the respective high-spin configurations. The positive-parity band represents one of the rare cases where band non-termination at the highest spin of the configuration could be established experimentally.

This paper presents the design and test results of a prototype monolithic pixel sensor manufactured in deep-submicron fully-depleted Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) CMOS technology. In the SOI technology, a thin layer of integrated electronics is insulated from a (high-resistivity) silicon substrate by a buried oxide. Vias etched through the oxide allow to contact the substrate from the electronics layer, so that pixel implants can be created and a reverse bias can be applied. The prototype chip, manufactured in OKI 0.15 micron SOI process, features both analog and digital pixels on a 10 micron pitch. Results of tests performed with infrared laser and 1.35 GeV electrons and a first assessment of the effect of ionising and non-ionising doses are discussed., Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Nuclear Instruments and Methods A

We present a microfluidic chip for fluorescent single particle measurement, featuring three-dimensional hydrodynamic focusing and an integrated self-aligned microlens which has an adjustable focal area. Microlenses are a powerful option to increase particle detection sensitivity but generally they are limited to one focal point. The newly developed self-aligned microlens with adjustable refractive index allows focusing the stimulating laser beam for different sample fluids and hence combines increased sensitivity with versatility of the optical measurement method. The three-dimensional hydrodynamic focusing provides a stream of seriatim particles in the channel, which is an important precondition for single particle measurement. With this design, fabricated in SU-8, single fluorescent particle measurement was successfully carried out.

International audience; A new development of an oscillator concept, dedicated to the detection and tracking of particles with low fluxes, is presented. The solution is based on an indirect detection of the current generated at the input of the detection chain, through a Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) response. The very first solution was proposed using bulk technology. This new development is based on SOI technology what makes it tolerant to radiations.