APT distribute Broadcom silicon photomultipliers AFBR S4N66C013 6mm 190px

Many of our customers are now aware that KETEK sold their Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) assets to the Industrial Fiber Optic Products Division (IFPD) of Broadcom in October 2021.

We are pleased to announce that AP Technologies is now working with Broadcom to support the sales of their full range of SiPMs.

In addition to the KETEK WB- and WL-series products we will be supplying Broadcom's high performance NUV-HD technology in 3mm, 4mm and 6mm surface mount packages & 4x4 (4mm pitch) array.

Broadcom's NUV-HD SiPMs are available as 3mm, 4mm and 6mm "chip-scale" surface mount components featuring high transmission glass windows.

The AFBR-S4N44C013 "4mm" component is slightly undersized with a 3.86 x 3.86mm² footprint enabling a 4x4-pixel array with a true 4mm centre-to-centre pitch.

All NUV-HD SiPMs offer high PDE of >55% at 420nm along with excellent timing characteristics making them ideally suited to a wide range of applications.

Broadcom's Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) surpass the current standard detectors (PMT, APD & PIN photodiodes) in many low light applications and are replacing these in a number of key applications areas such as:-

Medical Imaging (PET, SPECT, CT)
Hazard & Threat Detection
LiDAR & 3D Ranging
Biophotonics
High Energy Physics
Sorting & Recycling

Broadcom SiPMs feature leading edge CMOS wafer fabrication and wafer-level glass-window surface mount packaging to provide key performance benefits:-

• Low operating voltage
• Tightly controlled breakdown voltage
• Low temperature dependence of breakdown voltage
• High Gain & SNR
• Immunity to magnetic fields
• MRI compatible packaging
• Small size whilst mechanically and optically robust with no damage from high-light levels
• Multi-channel arrays can be made with fine pitch resolutions not possible in vacuum PMTs

In summary, Broadcom SiPMs combine the benefits of vacuum PMTs (high photon detection efficiency, gain and signal-to-noise) with those of APDs (robustness, miniaturised design, low operation voltage, cost-effective and magnetic insensitivity) to produce an outstanding low level light sensor with exceptional performance at low cost.