STUDY OF EDGELESS TIMEPIX PIXEL DEVICES

Silicon micropattern devices are crucial components of detector systems designed to study decays of exotic subatomic particles containing beauty and charm quarks. Among the technologies under consideration for use in future particle physics experiments are edgeless silicon pixel detectors. In these devices a state-of-the-art fabrication process is used to create sensors with a nearly full active area, as compared to conventional sensors which have a “guard ring” which is a dead region at the sensor periphery. Prototypes used for the study described in this paper were designed and fabricated by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. In a test beam study, we find that these devices perform in accordance with expectations and fulfill the technical needs of their intended implementation. This active edge technology is indeed efficient in maximizing the useful area of the sensor. More broadly, these devices meet the needs of a detector for particle physics, and may also find a role in medical imaging or X-ray spectroscopy