Description: CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) demonstrate excellent performances in the field of charged particle tracking. A single point resolution of 1–2 μm and a detection efficiency close to 100% were routinely observed with various MAPS designs featuring up to 10 6 pixels on active areas as large as 4 cm 2 [1]. Those features make MAPS an interesting technology for vertex detectors in particle and heavy ion physics. In order to adapt the sensors to the high particle fluxes expected in this application, we designed a sensor with fast column parallel readout and partially depleted active volume. The latter feature was expected to increase the tolerance of the sensors to non-ionizing radiation by one order of magnitude with respect to the standard technology. This paper discusses the novel sensor and presents the results on its radiation tolerance.

Description: The sequestration of CO2 gas streams of different origins into e.g. deep saline aquifers opened a major area for geochemical research on gas-fluid-rock interaction at elevated in situ pressures and temperatures. Besides the inherent problems of experimental approaches to constrain the kinetic parameters of the slow dissolution processes of silicates in highly saline brines, the often conincident dissolution and precipitation reactions hamper the determination of precise dissolution or precipitation rates in more complex experimentat approaches, e. g flow through experiments. To facilitate the precise determination of the amount of dissolved ions incorporated into newly formed precipitates within the reaction chambers, a spatial analyses of incorporation of isotopically- labelled elements/ions (e.g. 18 O) into mineral precipitates is beeing developed by using high resolution ToF-SIMS techniques. With this technique it is possible to simultaneously image the elemental, isotopic, and molecular composition in rocks with high spatial resolution. Also, the elemental and isotopical distribution as a function of depth can be monitored. To set up a database of a variety of rock-forming minerals, ToF-SIMS spectra were recorded in different measurement modes - either on individual crystal grains of less than 500 μm diameter or in thin sections from rocks envisaged as potential storage formations in Germany. Furthermore, a calibration of the isotopic scale has been performed by measuring artificially prepared minerals with different percentages of isotope labels incorporated. Thereby, the distinction of the incorporation of ions from dissolution (e.g. 99% 16 O) in contrast to those from the synthetic brine (e.g. 99% 18 O) is possible. In addition, using e.g. 18 O labels as atomic oxygen ions, the isotopic composition in larger molecules such as CO3 could be used to unambigously identify the mineral, into the labeled oxygen has been incorporated (e.g. clay minerals or carbonates).