Technology developments and first measurements of Low Gain Avalanche Detectors (LGAD) for high energy physics applications

This paper introduces a new concept of silicon radiation detector with intrinsic multiplication of the charge, called Low Gain Avalanche Detector (LGAD). These new devices are based on the standard Avalanche Photo Diodes (APD) normally used for optical and X-ray detection applications. The main differences to standard APD detectors are the low gain requested to detect high energy charged particles, and the possibility to have fine segmentation pitches: this allows fabrication of microstrip or pixel devices which do not suffer from the limitations normally found [1] in avalanche detectors. In addition, a moderate multiplication value will allow the fabrication of thinner devices with the same output signal of standard thick substrates. The investigation of these detectors provides important indications on the ability of such modified electrode geometry to control and optimize the charge multiplication effect, in order to fully recover the collection efficiency of heavily irradiated silicon detectors, at reasonable bias voltage, compatible with the voltage feed limitation of the CERN High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) experiments [2]. For instance, the inner most pixel detector layers of the ATLAS tracker will be exposed to fluences up to 2×10¹⁶ 1 MeV n_eq/cm², while for the inner strip detector region fluences of 1×10¹⁵ n_eq/cm² are expected. The gain implemented in the non-irradiated devices must retain some effect also after irradiation, with a higher multiplication factor with respect to standard structures, in order to be used in harsh environments such those expected at collider experiments