Performance of a TiN-coated monolithic silicon pin-diode array under mechanical stress

The Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino Experiment (KATRIN) will detect tritium β-decay electrons that pass through its electromagnetic spectrometer with a highly segmented monolithic silicon pin-diode focal-plane detector (FPD). This pin-diode array will be on a single piece of 500-μm-thick silicon, with contact between titanium nitride (TiN)-coated detector pixels and front-end electronics made by spring-loaded pogo pins. The pogo pins will exert a total force of up to 50 N on the detector, deforming it and resulting in mechanical stress up to 50 MPa in the silicon bulk. We have evaluated a prototype pin-diode array with a pogo-pin connection scheme similar to the KATRIN FPD. We find that pogo pins make good electrical contact to TiN and observe no effects on detector resolution or reverse-bias leakage current which can be attributed to mechanical stress.