A 60 μW front-end for 10 ps resolution monolithic pixel sensors in a 130nm SiGe BiCMOS process

This paper presents the development and optimization of a front-end circuit and the design of a monolithic sensor demonstrator with a high spatial resolution (hexagonal pixels with 50 mu m pitch) and sub-10 picosecond timing capability for the detection of ionizing radiation. The system combines a monolithic sensor in a SiGe BiCMOS process with a front-end architecture based on a SiGe Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor (HBT). The design of the prototype has been optimized to achieve improved timing performance while maintaining low power consumption by analyzing the trade-off between sensor input capacitance and power consumption. The goal is to achieve a timing resolution below 10 ps, a significant improvement over the previous prototype, which demonstrated a time resolution of 20 ps. This prototype has been developed in the framework of the MONOLITH H2020 ERC project.