Submission of the first full scale prototype chip for upgraded ATLAS pixel detector at LHC, FE-I4A

A new ATLAS pixel chip FE-I4 is being developed for use in upgraded LHC luminosity environments, including the near-term Insertable B-Layer (IBL) upgrade. FE-I4 is designed in a 130 nm CMOS technology, presenting advantages in terms of radiation tolerance and digital logic density compared to the 0.25μm CMOS technology used for the current ATLAS pixel IC, FE-I3. The FE-I4 architecture is based on an array of 80×336 pixels, each 50×250μm2, consisting of analog and digital sections.In the summer 2010, a first full scale prototype FE-I4A was submitted for an engineering run. This IC features the full scale pixel array as well as the complex periphery of the future full-size FE-I4. The FE-I4A contains also various extra test features which should prove very useful for the chip characterization, but deviate from the needs for standard operation of the final FE-I4 for IBL. In this paper, focus will be brought to the various features implemented in the FE-I4A submission, while also underlining the main differences between the FE-I4A IC and the final FE-I4 as envisioned for IBL.