Electrical Characterization of SiPM as a Function of Test Frequency and Temperature

Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM) represent a promising alternative to classical photomultipliers, for instance, for the detection of photons in high energy physics and medical physics. In the present work, electrical characterizations of test devices - manufactured by ST Microelectronics - are presented. SiPMs with an area of 3.5x3.5 micron^2 and a cell pitch of 54 micron were manufactured as arrays of 64x64 cells and exhibiting a fill factor of 31%. The capacitance of SiPMs was measured as a function of reverse bias voltage at frequencies ranging from from 20 Hz up to 1 MHz and temperatures from 300 K down to 85 K. While leakage currents were measured at temperatures from 400 K down to 85 K. Thus, the threshold voltage - i.e., voltage corresponding to that at which the multiplication regime for the leakage current begins - could be determined as a function of temperature. Finally, an electrical model suited to reproduce the dependence of the frequency dependence of capacitance is presented.
Comment: To appear on the Proceedings of the 13th ICATPP Conference on Astroparticle, Particle, Space Physics and Detectors for Physics Applications, Villa Olmo (Como, Italy), 3-7 October, 2011, to be published by World Scientific (Singapore)