A 55 cm2 cylindrical silicon drift detector

AZTEC, a large area cylindrical silicon drift detector was designed, produced and tested. AZTEC will be the building block of the NA45 and WA98 micro vertex detectors at CERN. Two AZTEC detectors are placed down stream from the target to measure trajectories of charged particles produced in the forward direction. The active area of AZTEC is practically the full usable surface of a 100 mm diameter wafer. The electrons drift radially from the center towards the outside. The sensing anodes are located at a radius of 42 mm. The center of the wafer is cut out and forms a passage for the noninteracting beam. With a minimal radius for this hole the active region of the drift detector starts at an inner radius of 3.1 mm. Any larger radius can be selected if necessary. With this geometry and a typical operating voltage the maximum drift time is less than 4 μs. Due to constrains in the mask layout the readout region and field electrodes are designed along the 360 sides of a symmetric polygon. All structures on one surface of the wafer are rotated by 0.5 with respect to the other surface. In the middle plane of the detector, where the electrons are mostly transported, the effective geometry is close to a smoothed polygon with 720 sides, cancelling practically all effects of the non-perfect cylindrical symmetry. The radial position of fast charged particles is measured by the electron drift time within the detector. The drift velocity can be monitored by 48 injection points at three different radii. The azimuthal angle is measured by the 360 readout anodes. Each anode is subdivided into five segments, which are interlaced with the neighbouring anodes. By this methode the azimuthal resolution is improved and corresponds to a 720 channel read out. (orig.)