Silicon Photomultipliers for Scintillation Readout: Device Physics, Noise Mechanisms, and Temperature Stabilization

The silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) has displaced the vacuum photomultiplier tube (PMT) in most new scintillation-readout designs, combining single-photon sensitivity with a bias voltage of a few tens of volts, a compact solid-state package, and immunity to magnetic fields. This review treats three coupled aspects of SiPM behaviour that determine what a scintillation detector built around such a device can actually achieve: the physics of the Geiger-mode single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) microcell and of the parallel microcell array, which fixes gain, photon detection efficiency (PDE), dynamic range and timing; the three correlated- and uncorrelated-noise mechanisms — dark counts, optical crosstalk and afterpulsing — that set an excess-noise floor independent of the coupled scintillator; and the temperature dependence that follows from the temperature coefficient of the breakdown voltage. Analytical relations for gain, PDE, saturation, dark count rate, excess noise factor and the bias-compensation law are stated explicitly, with symbols defined and internal numerical consistency checked. Published temperature-stabilization results are compared quantitatively across five distinct strategies, showing that photopeak or gain drift of 13–22 % per 10 °C can be reduced to 0.5–2 % by active bias correction. Remaining disagreements in the literature — chiefly the non-standardized reporting of correlated-noise metrics and the fact that bias compensation stabilizes overvoltage but not dark count rate or crosstalk — are identified as open problems. The synthesis is directed at the design of a prototype SiPM-coupled scintillation detector and complements companion reviews of scintillator materials and of system-level detector characterization prepared within the same research programme.

silicon photomultiplier; single-photon avalanche diode; dark count rate

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