New Improved MPPC for General Photon Counting Applications

Hamamatsu Photonics have expanded and improved on their range of semi-conductor detectors, featuring photon counting capability, with the introduction of the brand new S12571 series of multi-pixel photon counter devices (MPPC). This new series of general purpose MPPC offers drastically reduced afterpulsing compared to previous Hamamatsu MPPC detectors.

The S12571 series are 1x1mm devices supplied in ultra-compact surface mount plastic packages, or through-hole ceramic packages. Various pixel configurations are available, with pitches of 25um, 50um and 100um and pixel numbers of 1,600, 400 and 100 respectively. Each pixel contains a quenching resistor so that simultaneous photon events can be counted separately and with a high degree of accuracy. The devices feature typical high gain values of 5.15E5 to 2.8E6, comparable to that achievable from a conventional photomultiplier tube.

Some other key areas of improvement to the MPPC include; greatly reduced dark count, reduced afterpulsing, increased photon detection efficiency, improvements in timing resolution and linearity as well as reduced crosstalk. The result of these and other improvements means that the MPPC now has a much improved signal-to-noise ratio, wider operating voltage range, improved time resolution and a wider dynamic range.

With these improvements, the S12571 series are ideal for a variety of applications, including positron emission tomography, high-energy physics, DNA sequencing, fluorescence measurement, nuclear medicine, point of care systems, drug discovery, medical diagnostic equipment and environmental analysis.