2nd CMS Gold Award bestowed on GS Swiss PCB AG by CERN

GS Swiss PCB AG was granted the CMS Gold Award of the year 2009 for the excellent and consistent quality of the front-end hybrid PCBs for the CMS Preshower detector. The front-end hybrid PCBs are 6 layer rigid-flex substrates and GS delivered more than 5’000 pieces to CERN.

The “Compact Muon Solenoid” (CMS) is one of 4 detectors of the “Large Hadron Collider” LHC at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC itself is a 27 km long accelerator which was designed to discover the elusive Higgs Bosons particles. The collider cost over three billion Euros, took more than ten years to build and is situated 100 m underground. The CMS detector is 21m long, 15 m high and has a weight of 12’500 tonnes. The reliability of the PCBs is crucial since the PCBs are placed in the very hearth of the CMS detector and can not be replaced during the lifetime of the accelerator which is expected to run for over 15 years.

A total of 1’000 companies have worked for the CMS construction. Since 2000 the CMS collaboration has honored companies that have made outstanding contributions to the construction of the experiment with the CMS Gold Award. In 2008 GS was already recognized with the Gold Award 2008 for delivering over 75’000 flexible printed circuits on short notice, within budget and on-time. The circuits have to withstand high radiation as they are placed intimately close to the detection crystals.

GS Swiss PCB AG has further contributed to the tracker of CMS as well as various components of the ATLAS and ALICE experiment and is held in high esteem in the world of high energy physics.