Development of silicon micropattern pixel detectors

Successive versions of high speed, active silicon pixel detectors with integrated readout electronics have been developed for particle physics experiments using monolithic and hybrid technologies. Various matrices with binary output as well as a linear detector with analog output have been made. The hybrid binary matrix with 1024 cells (dimension 75 μm×500 μm) can capture events at ∼5 MHz and a selected event can then be read out in < 10 μs. In different beam tests at CERN a precision of 25 μm has been achieved and the efficiency was better than 99.2%. Detector thicknesses of 300 μm and 150 μm of silicon have been used. In a test with a ¹⁰⁹Cd source a noise level of 170 e^- r.m.s. (1.4 keV fwhm) has been measured with a threshold non-uniformity of 750 e^- r.m.s. Objectives of the development work are the increase of the size of detecting area without loss of efficiency, the design of an appropriate readout architecture for collider operation, the reduction of material thickness in the detector, understanding of the threshold non-uniformity, study of the sensitivity of the pixel matrices to light and low energy electrons for scintillating fiber detector readout and last but not least, the optimization of cost and yield of the pixel detectors in production.