3D active edge silicon sensors with different electrode configurations: Radiation hardness and noise performance

3D detectors, with electrodes penetrating the entire silicon wafer and active edges, were fabricated at the Stanford Nano Fabrication Facility (SNF), California, USA, with different electrode configurations. After irradiation with neutrons up to a fluence of 8.8×1015 neq cm−2, they were characterised using an infrared laser tuned to inject ∼2 minimum ionising particles showing signal efficiencies as high as 66% for the configuration with the shortest (56 μm) inter-electrode spacing. Sensors from the same wafer were also bump-bonded to the ATLAS FE-I3 pixel readout chip and their noise characterised. Most probable signal-to-noise ratios were calculated before and after irradiation to be as good as 38:1 after the highest irradiation level with a substrate thickness of 210 μm. These devices are promising candidates for application at the LHC such as the very forward detectors at ATLAS and CMS, the ATLAS B-Layer replacement and the general pixel upgrade. Moreover, 3D sensors could play a role in applications where high speed, high-resolution detectors are required, such as the vertex locators at the proposed Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) at CERN.