Thin Film Charged Particle Trackers

TL;DR

This paper reviews the potential of thin film fabrication techniques to create large-area, low-mass particle detectors that could revolutionize future high-energy physics experiments by reducing dead material and manufacturing costs.

Contribution

It provides an overview of existing silicon detector performance and explores the feasibility and challenges of developing thin film semiconductor detectors for particle physics.

Findings

Thin film techniques are mature in industry, e.g., for LED screens.

Large-area thin film detectors could match silicon performance.

Challenges include material stability and detector integration.

Abstract

Silicon tracking detectors have grown to cover larger surface areas up to hundreds of square meters, and are even taking over other sub-detectors, such as calorimeters. However, further improvements in tracking detector performance are more likely to arise from the ability to make a low mass detector comprised of a high ratio of active sensor to dead materials, where dead materials include electrical services, cooling, mechanical supports, etc. In addition, the cost and time to build these detectors is currently large. Therefore, advancements in the fundamental technology of tracking detectors may need to look at a more transformative approach that enables extremely large area coverage with minimal dead material and is easier and faster to build. The advancement of thin film fabrication techniques has the potential to revolutionize the next-to-next generation of particle detector experiments. Some thin film deposition techniques have already been developed and widely used in the industry to make LED screens for TV's and monitors. If large area thin film detectors on the order of several square meters can be fabricated with similar performance as current silicon technologies, they could be used in future particle physics experiments. This paper aims to review the key fundamental performance criteria of existing silicon detectors and past research to use thin films and other semi-conductor materials as particle detectors in order to explore the important considerations and challenges to pursue thin film detectors.