Beam monitoring system for therapeutic ion beams based on HV-CMOS active pixel sensors

This research focuses on first development steps of a beam monitoring system for therapeutic ion beams. These steps include evaluation and characterization of the HitPix sensor family, a series of HV-CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors with counting electronics and frame-based readout tailored for ion beam monitoring. The sensors characterization is performed in laboratory and ion beam environments and is followed by the development and production of first small multi-sensor assemblies to prove the beam monitoring concept. The next important step towards the final beam monitor and the main achievement of this thesis is the design and production of a beam monitor demonstrator based on 25 HitPix3 sensors integrated into a 5 x 5 matrix, which could fit the entire ion beams with a size larger than 20 mm for the first time. The first evaluation results of the demonstrator in ion beams confirm that the demonstrator meets the final system requirements in beam position and size reconstruction and completes the important milestone within the project timeline. The findings from these studies allowed to formulate design considerations for the new HitPix4 sensor and the final full-scale beam monitor.