At the beginning of September, 30 scientists from across Europe came to FNSPE CTU to present the progress achieved so far within the international project OCTOPUS (Optimized CMOS Technology fOr Precision in Ultra-thin Silicon). The research, focused on the development of pixel detectors, is conducted at the Faculty by the team of the Center for Applied Physics and Advanced Detection Systems (CAPADS), led by physicists Peter Švihra and Radek Novotný.
The OCTOPUS project was established within the international DRD3 (semiconductor detectors) collaboration at CERN and currently involves 13 European institutes. FNSPE CTU plays a key role among them, having hosted the collaboration’s first in-person meeting.
OCTOPUS focuses on the simulation, development, and evaluation of monolithic fine-pitch pixel sensors implemented in the TPSCo65 (65 nm CMOS) process. These sensors are designed to meet the challenging requirements of vertex detectors for future lepton colliders, as outlined in the ECFA detector roadmap.
The final development goals include a single-point resolution of about 3 µm, a time resolution down to 5 ns (as required for high-energy linear collider proposals), thinning to 50 µm, an average power consumption below 50 mW/cm², minimal inactive periphery, and an architecture scalable to large-area detector systems. Such parameters will enable more precise tracking of particle collisions and open the way to new discoveries in high-energy physics.
As an intermediate step, new high-resolution sensors for beam telescopes are being developed at CERN and DESY, with more relaxed requirements (time resolution ~100 ns, power consumption <500 mW/cm²). This staged approach allows the performance targets to be refined step by step, following the conclusions of future updates of the European Strategy for Particle Physics.
The Prague meeting, held from 2 to 5 September, began with a dedicated workshop for ASIC designers, aimed at streamlining design efforts and agreeing on the technologies and schemes to be used. This was followed by a plenary session presenting the goals of the DRD initiative, the vertexing and tracking requirements of future colliders, and detailed reports from all four OCTOPUS work packages.
FNSPE’s participation is financially supported by the OP JAK FORTE programme, co-funded by the European Union, as well as by CERN-CZ. The organization of the Prague meeting was further supported by the companies ÚJP Praha a.s. and onsemi.