BabyMOSS stitched sensors: results of characterisation tests for ALICE ITS3 upgrade
Alessandro Sturniolo
TL;DR
This work evaluates babyMOSS, a small, stitched CMOS sensor unit, as a proxy for the ALICE ITS3 large-area stitched sensors. Using lab tests and a September 2024 CERN PS test beam, the study demonstrates that babyMOSS achieves detection efficiency exceeding $99\%$, fake-hit rates below $10^{-6}$ per pixel/event, and spatial resolution better than $6\ \mu\mathrm{m}$, even after irradiation up to $10^{13}$ 1 MeV n$_{\mathrm{eq}}$ cm$^{-2}$ NIEL. The results, analyzed with the Corryvreckan framework, show only modest performance degradation at high thresholds and after irradiation, indicating strong compatibility with ITS3 requirements and providing essential guidance for full-scale sensor stitching and integration. Overall, the campaign supports the feasibility of ITS3’s half-layer, stitched-sensor approach and informs design choices for achieving the targeted material budget and tracking performance.
Abstract
During the Long Shutdown 3 (LS3, scheduled 2026-2030), the innermost 3 layers (Inner Barrel, or IB) of the present ALICE ITS2 will be replaced with large-area, flexible, stitched CMOS 65 nm sensors, arranged in 2 half-barrels of 3 half-layers each, in the framework of the ITS3 upgrade project. For the first time in a High Energy Physics experiment, such large-scale sensors will be bent into truly half-cylindrical shaped half-layers, requiring little mechanical support. This will also help lower the material budget: a reduction down to an average of 0.09% X$_{0}$ per layer is expected, benefitting ITS tracking and vertexing capabilities especially at low momenta. In the wafer yield and stitching assessment stage for ITS3 R&D, test devices from the Engineering Run 1 (ER1) submission were developed, including the MOnolithic Stiched Sensors (MOSS) and smaller variants of them (babyMOSS). In particular, babyMOSS is a single Repeated Sensor Unit (RSU) of a MOSS device: the chip is $\sim14\times30$ mm$^{2}$ in size, and consists of 8 digitally read out pixel matrices (regions) arranged in 2 rows, i.e. half-units (HUs). BabyMOSS chip characterisation tests have been performed in laboratory and test beam environments. Laboratory tests include systematic functional scans to study the behaviour of front-end electronics over a range of different settings, whereas test beam measurements, under high-energy charged particle beams, were used to investigate the detection efficiency and spatial resolution. In this contribution, we will present the babyMOSS chip characterisation campaign, with a focus on recent test beam results. So far, babyMOSS test beam results have been consistent with full MOSS, and confirmed that babyMOSS devices meet the ITS3 requirements: a detection efficiency $>99\%$, fake hit rate $<10^{-6}$ hits per pixel and event, and a spatial resolution $<6$ $μ$m.