SiPMs are the baseline photodetector technology for the dual-radiator Ring-Imaging Cherenkov
(dRICH) detector of the ePIC experiment at the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). SiPMs offer
significant advantages being cheap devices, highly efficient and insensitive to the high magnetic
field (∼ 1 T) at the expected location of the sensors in the experiment. However, they are not
radiation tolerant and one has to test whether the increase in dark count rate (DCR) can be
mitigated to maintain single-photon performance with current SiPM technology in a moderately
hostile radiation environment of < 10 11 1-MeV equivalent neutrons/cm 2 (n eq ). Several options are
available to maintain the DCR to an acceptable rate (below ∼ 100 kHz/mm 2 ) by reducing the SiPM
operating temperature and by recovering the radiation damage with high-temperature annealing
cycles. Moreover, by utilising high-precision TDC electronics the use of timing information can
effectively reduce background due to DCR. We present the current status of the R&D and the
results of studies performed on significant samples of commercial and prototype SiPM sensors.
The devices have undergone proton irradiation in two campaigns aimed at studying the device
performance with increasing NIEL doses up to 10 11 1-MeV n eq , the device recovery with long high-
temperature annealing cycles and the reproducibility of the performance in repeated irradiation-
annealing cycles. In October 2022 the sensors were mounted inside the dRICH detector prototype
and successfully tested with particle beams at the CERN PS accelerator. The results are obtained
with a complete chain of front-end and readout electronics based on the first 32-channel prototypes
of the ALCOR chip, a new ASIC designed for SiPM readout.