Development of radiation hardened pixel sensors for charged particle detection

CMOS Pixel Sensors are being developed since a few years to equip vertex detectors for future high-energy physics experiments with the crucial advantages of a low material budget and low production costs. The features simultaneously required are a short readout time, high granularity and high tolerance to radiation. This thesis mainly focuses on the radiation tolerance studies. To achieve the targeted readout time (tens of microseconds), the sensor pixel readout was organized in parallel columns restricting in addition the readout to pixels that had collected the signal charge. The pixels became then more complex, and consequently more sensitive to radiation. Different in-pixel architectures were studied and it was concluded that the tolerance to ionizing radiation was limited to 300 krad with the 0.35- m fabrication process currently used, while the targeted value was several Mrad. Improving this situation calls for implementation of the sensors in processes with a smaller feature size which naturally improve the radiation tolerance while simultaneously accommodate all the inpixel microcircuitry in small pixels. Another aspect addressed in this thesis was the tolerance to non ionizing radiation, with a targeted value of >1013 neq/cm2. Different CMOS technologies featuring an enhanced signal collection were therefore investigated. It was demonstrated that this tolerance could be improved to 3·1013 neq/cm2 by the means of a high-resistivity epitaxial layer. This achievement triggered a new age of the CMOS pixel sensors and showed that their development is on a good track to meet the requirements of the particularly demanding CBM experiment.