Monolithic CMOS sensors for high energy physics

Abstract Monolithic active pixel sensors manufactured in commercial CMOS technologies revolutionized imaging for consumer applications and are now moving into high energy physics: they have been adopted in the STAR and the ALICE experiments, and are being considered for the most demanding applications like the upgrade of the ATLAS pixel detector. These devices offer integration of sensor and readout in a single chip and low material budget. Deep submicron commercial CMOS technologies offer high speed and density, leading to high bandwidth capability and good spatial resolution for monolithic sensors, and volume production capability at low cost, important for large systems. This paper tries to give an overview.