A bit of LFoundry in the greatest experiment ever conducted on dark matter

LFoundry has been awarded the contract for the manufacture of silicon based sensors and electronic devices for INFN (National Institute of Nuclear Physics). The procedure for identifying and selecting the contractor, which began last September, ended on 6 March and concerns the three-year project supply of three classes of products: Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM), charged particle and X-ray detectors and CMOS integrated circuits on high-resistivity wafers. The implementation of SiPM will be addressed to various projects including DarkSide20k, the largest international experiment ever conducted on dark matter. As recently announced by the INFN, the experiment is scheduled to start on 2021 and will be set up in the Gran Sasso National Laboratories.  

"The key factors that have made the selection of LFoundry possible are two: the long experience on the development of high quality sensors and the ability to process silicon wafers on both sides" - explains Paolo Organtini, Director of Technology Development at LFoundry – “The available SiPM technology has been developed and subsequently transferred to us by the Fondazione Bruno Kessler of Trento, thanks to a collaboration started a few years ago. The high performance makes them excellent candidates for scientific experiments as well as for sophisticated medical equipment, such as PET. Of particular scientific interest is the experiment of the international collaboration DarkSide-20k for the search for dark matter. There are several scientific evidences of the fact that the matter we know, would represent only 5% of the mass of the universe. The rest would be given by about 25% of invisible matter called dark matter and 70% of another mysterious form that we call dark energy. The role of SiPM will be to detect the very faint light signals emitted by the interactions of dark matter particles with the nuclei of ordinary matter, consisting of 30 tons of liquid argon. To do this, in addition to a very low background noise, the detectors must be able to measure with extreme precision the duration of the light signals, in the range of nano- and microseconds. Based on the duration of the signal, in fact, one can understand whether the event was produced by background radiation or dark matter ".  

"We are proud of this result. LFoundry, thanks to the victory of the tender in which we have gladly participated has the opportunity to play a crucial role in the development of scientific knowledge of global importance. It would be wonderful, one day, to be able to say that it has provided an important contribution in giving experimental evidence on the existence of dark matter; a dream that has its foundations in the skills of LFoundry people”
Fabrizio Famà, vice president of Human Resources and Corporate Affairs