36. High ENERGY PHYSICS ELECTRONICS Maximum Phase I Award Amount: $200,000 Maximum Phase II Award Amount: $1,100,000 Accepting SBIR Phase I Applications: YES Accepting STTR Phase I Applications: YES High Energy Physics experiments require advanced electronics and systems for the recording and processing of experimental data. As an example, high-priority future experiments in the DOE Office of High Energy Physics portfolio need advances that can benefit from small business contributions. These experiments include potential upgrades to the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) detectors currently under construction (see https://home.cern/science/accelerators/large-hadron-collider) or other potential future High Energy Colliders, neutrino experiments including those sited deep underground (e.g., https://www.dunescience.org), next generation direct searches for dark matter, and astrophysical surveys to understand dark energy, including cosmic microwave background experiments. We seek small business industrial partners to advance the state of the art and/or increase cost effectiveness of instrumentation needed for the above experiments and for the wider HEP community. Specific technical areas are given in the subtopics below. These are areas where experimental needs have been defined and shortcomings of existing technology identified. R&D seeking new technology will typically be in progress at DOE national laboratories and/or DOE-funded universities. While the subtopics offer initial guidance about specific technology areas, the scientists involved are the best source of detailed information about requirements and relevance to the experimental programs listed above. Applicants are therefore urged to make early contact with lab and university scientists in order to develop germane proposals. Clear and specific relevance to high energy physics programmatic needs is required and supporting letters from lab and university scientists are an excellent way to show such relevance. Direct collaboration between small businesses and national labs and universities is strongly encouraged. For referral to lab and university scientists in your area of interest contact: Helmut Marsiske, helmut.marsiske@science.doe.gov Grant applications are sought in the following subtopics: a. Radiation Hard CMOS Sensors and Engineered Substrates for Detectors at High Energy Colliders Silicon detectors for high energy physics are currently based on hybrid technology, with separately fabricated diode strip or pixel sensors and bump-bonded Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) readout chips. As larger area detectors are required for tracking and also for new applications such as high granularity calorimetry, lower manufacturing cost is needed. For use in high energy physics, detectors must withstand both ionizing and displacement damage radiation, and they must have fast signal collection and fast readout as well as radiation tolerance in the range 100 to 1000 Mrad and 1E14 to 2E16 neutron equivalent fluence. Of interest are monolithic CMOS-based sensors with moderate depth (5-20 micron) high resistivity substrates that can be fully depleted and can achieve charge collection times of 20 ns or less. Technologies of interest include deep n- and p-wells to avoid parasitic charge collection in CMOS circuitry and geometries with low capacitance charge collection nodes. We aim for stitched, large area arrays of sensors with sensor thickness less than 50 microns and pixel pitch of less than 25 microns. Also of interest are low to moderate gain (x10-50) reach-through silicon avalanche diodes (LGADs) as a proposed sensor type to achieve ~10 ps time resolution for collider experiments. The current generation of reach-through diodes suffers from large fractional dead area at the edges of the pixel and only moderate radiation hardness. A moderately doped thin buried (~5 micron) layer replacing a reach-through implant can address some of these problems. We seek substrate fabrication technologies to improve the radiation hardness and stability of these devices by using graded epitaxy or wafer bonding to produce a buried and moderately doped (1E16) thin buried gain layer on a high resistivity substrate. We also seek techniques to arrange internal doping of detectors by multiple thick epitaxial layers or other methods to allow engineering of the internal fields and resulting pulse shape. Questions Contact: Helmut Marsiske, helmut.marsiske@science.doe.gov b. Single Electron Transistors for Exotic Force and Particle Searches Single electron transistors (SETs) can control the locations of individual electrons with high fidelity and can do so at relatively warm temperatures of 3K and above. These systems are fabricated by large CMOS foundries and offer all the attendant advantages. Although the unit of sensing is a single electron, there is the potential to achieve significantly lower noise level by various methods. External signals can be coupled to the circuitry by electric fields, magnetic fields, light, mechanical force, etc., which may allow novel ways to explore the exotic force and matter parameter space. Proposals are sought to develop SET-based low-noise, cryogenic systems that enable future, more sensitive exotica searches. Questions Contact: Helmut Marsiske, helmut.marsiske@science.doe.gov c. High Density Chip Interconnect Technology With the large channel counts and fine granularity of high energy physics detectors, there is an ever-increasing need for new technologies for higher-density interconnects. Grant applications are sought for the development of new technologies for reducing cost while increasing the density of interconnection of pixelated sensors to readout electronics by enhancing or replacing solder bump-based technologies. Development of cost-effective technologies to connect arrays of thinned integrated circuits (< 50 microns, with areas of ~2x2 cm^2) to high-resistivity silicon sensors with interconnect pitch of 50 microns or less are of interest. Technologies are sought that can minimize dead regions at device edges and/or enable wafer-to-wafer interconnection, by utilizing 3D integration with through-silicon vias or other methods. Present commercial chip packaging and mounting technologies can, at cryogenic temperatures, put mechanical stress on the silicon die which distort the operation of the circuit. Low cost and robust packaging and / or interconnect solutions that do not introduce such stresses would be of advantage especially in the case of large area circuit boards (> 0.5 m on each edge). Questions Contact: Helmut Marsiske, helmut.marsiske@science.doe.gov d. Radiation-Hard High-Bandwidth Data Transmission for Detectors at High Energy Colliders Detector data volumes at future colliders will be nearly 100 times more than today. Single subdetectors will have to transmit 10s to 100s of Tbps. While commercial off the shelf data transmission solutions will deliver the needed performance in the near future, these products cannot be used in future colliders for two main reasons: they will not function in a high radiation environment (hundreds of Mrad), and they are in general too massive to be placed inside detectors, where added mass degrades the measurements being made. Two main industrial developments are therefore of interest: very low mass, high bandwidth electrical cables, and radiation hard optical transceivers. Electrical cables may be twisted pair, twinax, etc., with as low as possible mass (and therefore small size) while compatible with multi-Gbps per lane transmission over distances up to 10m. Cable fabrication using aluminum, copper clad aluminum, or non-metallic conductors (such as CNT thread), is of interest. Many dielectrics are not radiation hard, so fabrication with non-standard dielectrics is important. Optical transceivers up to 100 Gbps will be needed. Many off the shelf commercial products meet or exceed the required bandwidth, but contain circuits that fail when exposed to ionizing radiation doses of hundreds of Mrad. Radiation hardened versions of commercial transceivers (or equivalent) are therefore of interest, where radiation hardness is achieved without adding mass or increasing size, for example by design changes to the integrated circuits used, specifically radiation hard device modeling and library development of deep sub-micron CMOS fabrication processes. Proposals that do not address the required level of radiation hardness will be considered non-responsive. Questions Contact: Helmut Marsiske, helmut.marsiske@science.doe.gov e. Electronics and Frequency Multiplexed DAQ Systems for Low-Temperature Experiments Many HEP experiments are operated in the deep cryogenic regime (10-100 mK) with large numbers of readout channels required. Data acquisition and controls signals from the mK stage out to room temperature require high-fidelity RF signals, extremely low noise, and low thermal load on the cryogenic systems. Applications range from future CMB experiments that will have large focal plane arrays with ~500,000 superconducting detector elements, to axion dark matter searches with similar channel count to reach to high axion masses, to large-scale phonon-based WIMP dark matter searches. Specific areas of interest include: Low-noise cryogenic amplifiers (HEMT, SQUID, Parametric, etc.); High-density cryogenic interconnects for mK to LHe temperature stages; Scalable high-density superconducting interconnects for micro-fabricated superconducting devices; High-frequency superconducting flex circuits; Specialized electronics for processing large numbers of frequency-domain multiplexed RF signals; Wafer processing combining niobium metal and MEMS; Fabrication of miniature, ultra-low loss, superconducting resonator arrays; and Electronic frequency tuning mechanisms for microwave resonators. Questions Contact: Helmut Marsiske, helmut.marsiske@science.doe.gov f. High-Channel Count Electronic Tools for Picosecond (ps) Timing High precision timing measurements in next generation detectors will require the development of circuitry to measure time to 1 ps or better over channel counts that may exceed 100,000. In addition, a method to distribute a stable reference clock with jitter of 5 ps of less and precise frequency stabilization is needed. Such a clock system needs to distribute the clock to multiple detector components distributed by distances of order ten to twenty meters. Custom radiation-hard ASIC devices will eventually be needed for many such high precision uses, but non-radiation hard demonstration systems meeting ps sensitivity and stability are of immediate interest. Questions Contact: Helmut Marsiske, helmut.marsiske@science.doe.gov g. Other In addition to the specific subtopics listed above, the Department invites grant applications in other areas that fall within the scope of the topic description above. Questions Contact: Helmut Marsiske, helmut.marsiske@science.doe.gov References: 1. Indico, CERN. Topical Workshop on Electronics for Particle Physics (TWEPP18). Indico, CERN, September 17-21, 2018, Antwerpen, Belgium. https://indico.cern.ch/event/697988/ 2. IOP Science. Workshop on Intelligent Trackers (WIT2010). Journal of Instrumentation, IOP Science, Berkeley, CA, 2010, http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-0221/focus/extra.proc7 3. 23th International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP). Indico, CERN, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2018, https://indico.cern.ch/event/587955/ 4. PM2018 - 14th Pisa Meeting on Advanced Detectors. Indico, La Biodola, Isola d'Elba, Italy, 2018, https://agenda.infn.it/event/17834/ 5. International Conference on Technology and Instrumentation in Particle Physics. TIPP2017, 2017, Beijing, China, May 22-26, 2017, http://tipp2017.ihep.ac.cn/ 6. 21st IEEE Real-Time Conference. Indico, CERN, Williamsburg, VA, 9-15 June 2018, https://indico.cern.ch/event/543031/ 7. VCI. 15th Vienna Conference on Instrumentation. Vienna Conference On Instrumentation, Vienna, Austria, Feb 18-22, 2019, https://vci2019.hephy.at/home/
