Radiation effects in electronics for the CMS tracking detector

This thesis presents a study into the CMS tracker analogue front-end amplifier readout chip (APV), which during the period of the study was fabricated in three different VLSI technologies. The early versions were fabricated in a total dose radiation hardened Harris 1.2#mu#m process. Later it was transferred to a DMILL 0.8#mu#m process and the latest version is in a 0.25#mu#m technology. Part of this thesis describes a test system which was designed to thoroughly test APV chips on the silicon wafer and produce a comprehensive data set for each chip to enable confident selection of good chips. The main study is on the effects that large dose radiation environments can cause in the individual parts of the chip. With the chips fabricated in different technologies it was possible to make some comparisons of the magnitude of the effects between the Harris and the 0.25#mu#m technologies, but most of the work was aimed towards understanding the effects within the 0.25#mu#m technology. Single Event Upset (SEU) was the main consideration behind the experimental and simulation work. The study had two main goals: the first was to investigate how SEU would affect the operation of the CMS detector in the expected high radiation environment of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The second goal was to look at SEU from a more academic viewpoint, enabling a full understanding of how it is caused and what factors affect its magnitude. Simulations were performed in order to reconstruct the conditions brought about by highly ionising particles striking certain parts of the sensitive circuits, along with careful consideration of the mechanisms behind the effect such as: ionised charge collection within the semiconductor parts of the chip, how this charge deposition affects the circuit and how the effects manifest themselves within larger devices. A good set of results was collected from specially designed experiments, from which a confirmation of the theoretical effect was produced. (author)Available from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DXN058401 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo