Development of thin edgeless silicon pixel sensors on epitaxial wafers

The paper reports on the development of novel p-on-n thin edgeless planar pixel sensors, compatible with ALICE front-end electronics, fabricated by FBK on epitaxial material. The focus of the activity is the minimization of the material budget required for hybrid pixel detectors. This goal has been addressed in two different stages. In the first one, planar pixel detectors fabricated on epitaxial wafers have been thinned and bonded to the readout chips. The second stage is described by the present paper: the ‘active edge’ concept has been studied for the reduction of the dead area at the periphery of the devices. An overview of the key technological steps and of the electrical characterization of the fabricated sensors is given. In addition, the preliminary results on the static behavior of test sensors after neutron irradiation at different fluences (up to 2.5x10^15 1MeV-neq/cm^2) is reported. The results demonstrate that these kinds of devices are a viable solution for the reduction of the material budget while maintaining the typical electrical characteristics expected from radiation silicon sensors.