STM gets CERN/ATLAS Award for Development and Production of Radiation-Hard Voltage Regulators

The Award, which was presented in Geneva by Peter Jenni, leader of the ATLAS Collaboration, recognizes the close cooperation between ST and CERN in developing these unique devices, which are now also available on the open market as the RHFL4913 (positive) and RHFL7913 (negative) low drop voltage regulators for satellite and other aerospace applications.

ATLAS is one of the two large CERN particle physics experiment built to explore the fundamental nature of matter and the basic forces that shape the universe. Many important discoveries in physics have been made by examining the high-energy collisions of subatomic particles such as protons and neutrons. In the ATLAS experiment, protons will collide at record energies up to 7 TeV (7 trillion electron volts) per proton provided by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). ATLAS is one of the largest collaborative efforts ever attempted in the physical sciences, with 1800 physicists from more than 150 universities and laboratories in 35 countries participating. ST has delivered some 40,000 of the specially developed radiation-hard voltage regulators to the ATLAS project for use in the Liquid Argon Calorimeter front-end electronics, in the power distribution of the Pixel detector and TRT (Transition-Radiation Tracking detector), and in other sub-systems.

“We are very proud to receive an ATLAS Supplier Award, which underlines our ability to deliver products that operate reliably under such harsh radiation conditions,” said Carmelo Papa, Corporate Vice President of ST’s MPA (Micro, Power and Analog) Group which developed the devices when ATLAS scientists found that no voltage regulator was available on the market to satisfy their challenging technical requirements. These included the need to supply sufficient current reliably while operating in an hostile environment with very high levels of radiation. “The award is particularly satisfying because these unique products, essential for the ATLAS project, were the result of concurrent engineering work led by two R&D and product development teams,” added Papa.

The ATLAS Award citation draws attention to the technical challenges that ST had to overcome and acknowledges the Company’s contribution to this major project and notes that “without the contribution from ST it would have been extremely difficult to complete the liquid argon calorimeter front-end electronics and the ATLAS Collaboration expresses its sincere appreciation for ST’s enormous effort, warm cooperation, and excellent performance.”