Electrical Induced Annealing technique for neutron radiation damage on SiPMs

The use of Silicon Photo-Multipliers (SiPMs) has become popular in the design of High Energy Physics experimental apparatus with a growing interest for their application in detector area where a significant amount of non-ionising dose is delivered. For these devices, the main effect caused by the neutron flux is a linear increase of the leakage current. In this paper, we present a technique that provides a partial recovery of the neutron damage on SiPMs by means of an Electrical Induced Annealing. Tests were performed on a sample of three SiPM arrays (2 × 3) of 6 mm^2 cells with 50 {\mu}m pixel sizes: two from Hamamatsu and one from SensL. These SiPMs were irradiated up to an integrated neutron flux up to 8 × 10^11 n_{1MeV−eq}/cm2. Our techniques allowed to reduced the leakage current of a factor ranging between 15-20 depending on the overbias used and the SiPM vendor.