The high luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider, foreseen for 2029, requires the replacement of the ATLAS Inner Detector with a new all-silicon Inner Tracker (ITk). The expected ultimate ...total integrated luminosity of 4000 fb−1 means that the strip part of the ITk detector will be exposed to the total particle fluences and ionizing doses reaching the values of 1.6⋅1015MeVneq/cm2 and 0.66MGy, respectively, including a safety factor of 1.5. Radiation hard n+-in-p micro-strip sensors were developed by the ATLAS ITk strip collaboration and are produced by Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. The active area of each ITk strip sensor is delimited by the n-implant bias ring, which is connected to each individual n+ implant strip by a polysilicon bias resistor. The total resistance of the polysilicon bias resistor should be within a specified range to keep all the strips at the same potential, prevent the signal discharge through the grounded bias ring and avoid the readout noise increase. While the polysilicon is a ubiquitous semiconductor material, the fluence and temperature dependence of its resistance is not easily predictable, especially for the tracking detector with the operational temperature significantly below the values typical for commercial microelectronics.
Dependence of the resistance of polysilicon bias resistor on the temperature, as well as on the total delivered fluence and ionizing dose, was studied on the specially-designed test structures called ATLAS Testchips, both before and after their irradiation by protons, neutrons, and gammas to the maximal expected fluence and ionizing dose. The resistance has an atypical negative temperature dependence. It is different from silicon, which shows that the grain boundary has a significant contribution to the resistance. We discuss the contributions by parameterizing the activation energy of the polysilicon resistance as a function of the temperature for unirradiated and irradiated ATLAS Testchips.
The ATLAS experiment will replace its existing Inner Detector with the new all-silicon Inner Tracker (ITk) to cope with the operating conditions of the forthcoming high-luminosity phase of the LHC ...(HL-LHC). The outer regions of the ITk will be instrumented with ∼18000 ATLAS18 strip sensors fabricated by Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. (HPK). With the launch of full-scale sensor production in 2021, the ITk strip sensor community has undertaken quality control (QC) testing of these sensors to ensure compliance with mechanical and electrical specifications agreed with HPK. The testing is conducted at seven QC sites on each of the monthly deliveries of ∼500 sensors.
This contribution will give an overview of the QC procedures and analysis; the tests most likely to determine pass/fail for a sensor are IV, long-term leakage current stability, full strip test and visual inspection. The contribution will then present trends in the results and properties following completion of ∼60% of production testing. It will also mention challenges overcome through collaborative efforts with HPK during the early phases of production. With less than 5% of sensors rejected by QC testing, the overall production quality has been very good.
The bulk damage of p-type silicon sensors caused by gamma irradiation with high total ionizing doses has been investigated. The study was carried out on different types of n+-in-p silicon diodes with ...different oxygen concentrations and silicon bulk resistivities. The Secondary-Ion Mass Spectrometry technique was used to determine the relative concentration of oxygen in the individual samples. The measured diodes were irradiated by a 60Co gamma source to total ionizing doses ranging from 0.50 up to 8.28 MGy, and annealed for 80 min at 60 °C. The main goal of the study was to characterize the gamma-radiation induced displacement damage by measuring I–V and C–V characteristics, and the evolution of the full depletion voltage with the total ionizing dose. The Transient Current Technique was used to verify the full depletion voltage and to extract the electric field distribution and the sign of the space charge in the silicon diodes irradiated to the lowest and the highest delivered total ionizing doses.
The results show a linear increase of the bulk leakage current with the total ionizing dose, with the damage coefficient being dependent on initial resistivity and oxygen concentration of the silicon diode. The effective doping concentration and full depletion voltage decrease significantly with an increasing total ionizing dose, before starting to increase again at a specific dose. We assume that the initial decrease in the effective doping concentration is caused by the effect of acceptor removal. An additional notable finding of this study is that the bulk leakage current and C–V characteristics of the gamma-irradiated diodes do not show any evidence of an annealing effect.
The first (v_{1}^{fluc}), second (v_{2}), and third (v_{3}) harmonic coefficients of the azimuthal particle distribution at midrapidity are extracted for charged hadrons and studied as a function of ...transverse momentum (p_{T}) and mean charged particle multiplicity density ⟨N_{ch}⟩ in U+U (sqrts_{NN}=193 GeV), Au+Au, Cu+Au, Cu+Cu, d+Au, and p+Au collisions at sqrts_{NN}=200 GeV with the STAR detector. For the same ⟨N_{ch}⟩, the v_{1}^{fluc} and v_{3} coefficients are observed to be independent of the collision system, while v_{2} exhibits such a scaling only when normalized by the initial-state eccentricity (ϵ_{2}). The data also show that ln(v_{2}/ϵ_{2}) scales linearly with ⟨N_{ch}⟩^{-1/3}. These measurements provide insight into initial-geometry fluctuations and the role of viscous hydrodynamic attenuation on v_{n} from small to large collision systems.
The Quality Control (QC) of pre-production strip sensors for the Inner Tracker (ITk) of the ATLAS Inner Detector upgrade has finished, and the collaboration has embarked on the QC test programme for ...production sensors. This programme will last more than 3 years and comprises the evaluation of approximately 22000 sensors. 8 Types of sensors, 2 barrel and 6 endcap, will be measured at many different collaborating institutes. The sustained throughput requirement of the combined QC processes is around 500 sensors per month in total. Measurement protocols have been established and acceptance criteria have been defined in accordance with the terms agreed with the supplier. For effective monitoring of test results, common data file formats have been agreed upon across the collaboration. To enable evaluation of test results produced by many different test setups at the various collaboration institutes, common algorithms have been developed to collate, evaluate, plot and upload measurement data. This allows for objective application of pass/fail criteria and compilation of corresponding yield data. These scripts have been used to process the data of more than 3000 sensors so far, and have been instrumental for identification of faulty sensors and monitoring of QC testing progress.