Development of CMOS LGAD sensors for the ALICE~3 Time of Flight detector

TL;DR

This paper reports on the development and testing of CMOS LGAD sensors designed for the ALICE 3 detector, achieving high gain and fast timing in a standard CMOS process for high-energy physics applications.

Contribution

It introduces a monolithic CMOS LGAD sensor with an internal gain layer, demonstrating its feasibility and performance for particle detection.

Findings

Intrinsic gain between 10 and 13

Time resolution of 75 ps

Successful implementation in 110 nm CMOS process

Abstract

The next-generation ALICE 3 experiment at the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) requires detector technologies that combine fine spatial resolution, fast timing, and an extremely low material budget. This paper presents the design, characterization, and beam-test performance of MadPix, a monolithic CMOS sensor featuring an internal avalanche gain layer. The sensor is implemented in a 110 nm CMOS imaging process and demonstrates the portability of the Low Gain Avalanche Diode concept to a standard CMOS technology. The results showed an intrinsic gain between 10 and 13 and a time resolution of 75 ps.