Feasibility study of CSNS as an ATLAS ITk sensor QA irradiation site

The current ATLAS Inner Detector will undergo a complete upgrade in order to meet the requirements of the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). The new Inner Tracker (ITk) will be made completely of silicon sensors fabricated by Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. (HPK). Quality Assurance (QA) is focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled in production such as irradiation tolerance and testing specification for the mini sensors. The Associated Proton beam Experiment Platform (APEP) beam line at the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) was commissioned in 2022. This study focused on verifying the feasibility of CSNS as an ITk sensor QA irradiation site. A low-temperature Peltier cold box has been developed to keep the irradiation sensor samples at −15 \(^{\circ}\)C . Several fluence points have been studied from \(5.1 \times 10^{14} ~n_{eq}/cm^{2}\) to \(1.6 \times 10^{15} ~n_{eq}/cm^{2}\) , measured with the activation of the aluminium foils. The post-irradiation measurements (IV, CV, and CCE) are done under cold temperatures (−8 \(^{\circ}\)C for IV and CV, −20 \(^{\circ}\)C for CCE), after annealing for 80 min at 60 \(^{\circ}\)C . Test results show CSNS could be a suitable proton irradiation site for the ATLAS ITk sensor project, after formal site qualification.

Further reading: Hui Li, et al., Feasibility study of CSNS as an ATLAS ITk sensor QA irradiation site, Nucl. Instrum. Methods A 1063 (2024) 169288