HitPix3 — A new HV-CMOS active pixel sensor for ion beam therapy

Particle therapy is a well-established clinical treatment of tumors and so far, more than one hundred centers are in operation around the world. High accuracy on position and dose rate in beam monitoring are major cornerstones of clinical success in particle therapy. A high voltage CMOS (HV-CMOS) monolithic active pixel sensor was developed for this beam monitoring system. The HV-CMOS technology has demonstrated many advantages over other technologies in dealing with radiation tolerance. This HV-CMOS sensor was produced with a 180 nm commercial technology on high-resistivity substrate. The HitPix sensor features several specific design details for operation in a high-intensity ion beam environment: hit-counting pixels, on-sensor projection calculation, radiation tolerant design and frame-based readout. It has a 9775 μ m × 10110 μ m sensor area with 200 μ m × 200 μ m pixel size. The new HitPix3 has a number of improvements, including a modified in-pixel amplifier, on-sensor calculation of beam profile projection in two dimensions, and in-pixel threshold tuning capacity. The functionality of these features was confirmed in laboratory tests of unirradiated HitPix3 sensors, making the HitPix3 an important step in developing a sensor for use in ion beam monitoring.