Characterisation of silicon microstrip detectors for the ATLAS Phase-II Upgrade with a micro-focused X-ray beam

The planned HL-LHC (High Luminosity LHC) in 2025 is being designed to maximise the physics potential through a sizable increase in the luminosity, totalling 1 x 10³⁵ cm^-2s^-1 after 10 years of operation. A consequence of this increased luminosity is the expected radiation damage at 3000 fb^-1, requiring the tracking detectors to withstand hadron equivalences to over 1 x 10¹⁶ 1 MeV neutrons per cm². With the addition of increased readout rates, a complete re-design of the current ATLAS Inner Detector (ID) is being developed as the Inner Tracker (ITk). Two proposed detectors for the ATLAS strip tracker region of the ITk were characterized at the Diamond Light Source with a 3 μm FWHM 15 keV micro focused X-ray beam. The devices under test were a 320 μm thick silicon stereo (Barrel) ATLAS12 strip mini sensor wire bonded to a 130 nm CMOS binary readout chip (ABC130) and a 320 μm thick full size radial (Endcap) strip sensor - utilizing bi-metal readout layers - wire bonded to 250 nm CMOS binary readout chips (ABCN-25). Sub-strip resolution of the 74.5 μm strips was achieved for both detectors. Investigation of the p-stop diffusion layers between strips is shown in detail for the wire bond pad regions. Inter strip charge collection measurements indicate that the effective width of the strip on the silicon sensors is determined by p-stops regions between the strips rather than the strip pitch. The collected signal allowed for the identification of operating thresholds for both devices, making it possible to compare signal response between different versions of silicon strip detector modules.