Characterisation studies of silicon photomultipliers

• DOI: 10.1016/j.nima.2010.03.169
• Publication Date: 2010-04-10T08:33:08Z
• Authors: Patrick Eckert; Hans-Christian Sc...; Wei Shen; Rainer Stamen; Alexander Tadday
• Keywords: Silicon Photomultiplier; Spectral sensitivity

This paper describes an experimental setup that has been developed to measure and characterise properties of Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM). The measured SiPM properties are of general interest for a multitude of potential applications and comprise the Photon Detection Efficiency (PDE), the voltage dependent cross-talk and the after-pulse probabilities. With the described setup the absolute PDE can be determined as a function of wavelength covering a spectral range from 350 to 1000nm. In addition, a method is presented which allows to study the pixel uniformity in terms of the spatial variations of sensitivity and gain. The results from various commercially available SiPMs - three HAMAMATSU MPPCs and one SensL SPM - are presented and compared.<br/>11 pages, 21 figures, submitted to Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A<br/>