619

IEEE T R A " r m N S ON NUCLEAR SCIENCE, VOL. 39, NO. 4,1992

Large Area Cylindrical Silicon Drift Detector

W. Chen, H. Kraner, Z. Li, P. Rehak

Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton NY 11973

E. Gatti, A. Longoni, M. Sampietro

Politecnico di Milano, 32 Piaeza Leonard0 da Vinci, 20133 Milano, Italy*

P. Holl, J. Kemmer
TU Miinchen, 8046 Garching and
KETEK GmbH, Hauptstrafle 41d, 8048 Haimhausen, Germany

U. Faschingbauer, B. Schmitt, A. Worner, J. P. Wurm

Max-Planck-Institut for Nuclear Physics, D-6900 Heidelberg 1, Germany

Abstract
An advanced silicon drift detector, a large area cylin-
drical drift detector, was designed, produced, tested and
installed in the NA45 experiment. The active area of the
detector is practically the total area of a 3 inch diame-
ter wafer. Signal electrons created in the silicon detector
by fast charged particles drift radially outside toward an
array of 360 anodes located on the periphery of the de-
tector. The drift time measures the radial coordinate
of the particle's intersection; the charge sharing between
anodes measures the azimuthal coordinate.
The detector provides unambiguous pairs of r,d co-
ordinates for events with multiplicities up to several
hundred. Its use in the experiment aims at a position
resolution of 20 pm (rms) in each direction giving about
2 loe two-dimensional elements.
There is a small hole in the center of the detector
to allow the passage of the noninteracting particle beam.
The longest drift distance is about 3 cm. The nomi-
nal value of the drift field is 500 V/cm resulting in a
maximum drift time of 4 ps.
This manuscript has been authorized under contract
number DE-AC02-76CH00016 with the U.S. Department
of Energy. Accordingly, the U. S. Government retains
a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to publish or repro-
duce the published form of this contribution, or allow
others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes.
(*) This research is also supported by the Italian INFN,
MURST and CNR.
I. INTRODUCTION
The semiconductor drift detector [I] uses the trans-
port of electrons in a direction parallel to the large de-
tector surface. The direction of the transport is imposed
by means of rectifying junctions at different potentials on
both sides of the wafer. The shape of the junctions as
well as the applied potential on them can vary to achieve
different drift geometries. Up to now only linear geome-
tries and cylindrical geometries with the drift of electrons
toward the center were realized [2-31.
An ideal detector for the experiment NA45 at the
CERN SPS [4] should measure x and y coordinates
of several hundred charged particles in an unambiguous
way. The required resolution is about 20 pm in both co-
ordinates within a circular area with a radius of 3 cm.
A cylindrical silicon drift detector can fulfill those re-
quirements of the experiment. In reality the cylindrical
geometry of the detector is very close to the ideal geome-
try for most of fixed target experiments with unpolarieed
beams.
Fig. 1 shows the detector and its supporting assem-
bly. The active part is practically the entire 3 inch silicon
wafer with a small hole in the center. Signal electrons
produced by fast particles drift inside the silicon radi-
ally towards the outside edge of the detector. Close to
the outside edge there is an array of 360 anodes a t the
same radius each collecting electrons from 1 deg seg-
ments. Anodes are bonded to traces on a ceramic board
to which the silicon wafer is glued. The traces on the
ceramic board contact traces on an FR-4 (G10) mother
board leading to the inputs of charge sensitive pream-
plifiers. The contacts are accomplished by a layer of
elastomer interconnectors [5]. The mechanical forces for
all connectors are provided by 12 screws. The ceramic

0018-9499/92$03.00 0 1992 IEEE


Figure 1: Photograph of the n-side of the cylindrical
detector within its assembly. The detector is the silicon
wafer of 3 inch diameter with a small hole in the center
to allow the passage of the noninteracting beam. Anodes
are connected to the outside preamplifiers. A mother
board for the preamplifiers fills the outside radius. (160
")
board holding the detector can be thus quickly discon-
nected from the FR-4 mother board and heated to as
high a temperature as 3 O O O C for a possible annealing of
the radiation damage.
The preamplifiers are of a hybrid type [6] with 3
channels in each unit. The photograph shows the sockets
into which the preamplifier units are plugged. The
outside diameter of the assembly is 160 mm.
Each preamplifier drives about 5 m long 50S2 cable
with a gaussian shaper [6] a t the receiving end. Outputs
of the shapers are sampled at 50 MHz by fast 6 bit
nonlinear flash ADCs [7].
The present paper treats mainly the design aspects
of the detector and is organized as follows. The second
section studies the transport of electrons in a cylindrical
geometry. The consequences of the analysis of the
transport for the pitch of anodes and for the number
of read out channels is shown. The third section treats
the flow of the leakage current generated at the Si -
Si02 interface into a sink anode. The diversion of the
leakage current away from the signal anodes improves
the performance of' the detector. Moreover, the increase
of the current generation on the Si - Si02 interface due
to anticipated radiation damage effects less the detector.
The detector is thus expected to be radiation harder than
one would first estimate.
The fourth section shows some results obtained from
laboratory tests and from the run of the detector at the
NA45 experiment at CERN. Results from the experiment
are very preliminary and more beam results will be
published later. A list of conclusions closes the paper.
11. TRANSPORT OF ELECTRONS
A. Theoretical considerations
During the drift time the electrons diffiise in the drift
direction (r) and in a direction perpendicular to the drift
(4). The diffusion in the drift direction is not influenced
by the drift field. However, in the 4 direction the effect
of the diffusion is combined with the defocusing caused
by the radial divergence of the drift field.
The general problem of the electron transport in a
radial field can be simplified in our case of a constant
radial drift velocity v. We treat the motion of electrons
in a coordinate system having the origin a t the center
of gravity of the entire electron cloud. (Moving away
from the center with a constant radial velocity v . ) Let
us define direction X = ~4 perpendicular to the radius
direction at the center of the electron cloud. The mean
radial velocity of an electron a t X has a component of
velocity v x = v $ in the X direction. The net flux of
electrons in the X direction thus can be written as:
X an
j x = nu- - D -
T ax
where n(t,X ) is the electron density and D is the diffusion
constant of electrons in silicon. Combined with the
continuity equation we obtain the diffusion equation for
electrons in X direction
where TO is the initial radial coordinate of the electron
cloud.
The solution of the above differential equation is
a Gaussian distribution of n(t,X) with respect to the
coordinate x
n ( t , X ) = -e
1 -q
2~
&U
where the time dependence enters through U
The second term is the square of the initial spread of
the electron cloud multiplied by the square of the
radii ratio. This is the simple geometrical projection of
the initial sigma to the final radius. The first term is
due to the diffusion of electrons during the drift. The
well known expression for the diffusion in a linear field

D - between modes
o - 10% of anode pitch
X - 40% of anode pitch
~~
I I I
30.0 40U.O 600.0 800.0
Anode pitch Iuml
Figure 2: Optimal resolution of an ideal cylindrical
detector in the X coordinate obtainable by the charge
division as a function of the anode pitch. 20000 electrons
were produced at radius of 6 mm and drifted towards an
anode ring a t a radius of 32 mm.
is multiplied with a factor, which is the square root of
the geometrical factor for the original spread. Physically
it means that the diffusion during the drift is multiplied
by an average geometrical factor smaller than the factor
corresponding to a full drift length. If we project the
measured diffusion at the radius of anodes back to the
origin of the ionization, the width of diffusion is smaller
than the diffusion width in a linear geometry.
B. Position Resolution
The difference between the the diffusion during the
drift in cylindrical and linear geometry is larger when the
electrons were created closer to the center, that is, for TO
smaller. Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 show the optimum resolution
along the x coordinate as a function of the anode pitch
in a cylindrical and linear geometry respectively. Signal
electrons were produced 6 mm from the center and
drifted toward anode ring located a t radius of 32 mm.
Due to the defocusing effects during the diffusion in the
cylindrical geometry the electrons arrive at the anode
ring with a Y I = 400pm to be compared with a spread
in a linear case of 170 p m only. The position along
the anode direction is determined by a charge division
method. That means that the full signal from every anode
62 1
0 I I
9
0
200.0 I
400.0 I
600.0 I
800.0 1000.0
I
1000.0
Anode pitch [uml
Figure 3: Optimal resolution in a linear geometry under
the same signal and the same drift path as at previous
Fig.
receiving the electron cloud is used in an optimal way
to determine precisely the anode coordinate X. However,
in the cylindrical case, the position X determined at the
anode ring by charge division is projected to the initial
radius. The resolution obtained a t the anode ring is
thus improved by the ratio of the initial and the anode
radii. No such projection is done in the case of a linear
geometry and the anode resolution is the resolution of
the measurement. We can see that for an anode pitch
of 500 p m (selected in the design) and for the origin
of ionization TO equal to 6 mm the cylindrical case has
about three times better resolution than the linear case.
The difference between the resolution in cylindrical and
linear geometry decreases with an increase of PO.
There are several resolution curves on Fig. 2 and
Fig. 3. The lowest curve (the best resolution) corresponds
to a case where the cloud of signal electrons arrives in
between two neighbour anodes. The charge division
gives the position of the center of the cloud with a
very good accuracy even when the anode pitch is larger
then the spread of the cloud. The highest curve (the
worst precision) corresponds to the arrival of the signal
electrons right a t the center of an anode. There is
aot enough signal on the neighbour anodes if the anode
pitch is larger than the spread of the electrons. The
622
Figure 4: Closer look on the n-side of the cylindrical
detector and its assembly. The magnification is about 2.6
times.
curves between these two extremes have the center of the
electrons shifted a t 10% of the anode pitch. The r.m.s of
the electron cloud is 400 p m in the Fig. 2 and we start
to see the dependence of the resolution on the coordinate
relative to the anode position for the anode pitch above
500 p m .
The other interesting detail shown in Fig. 2 is the
worsening of resolution with a smaller anode pitch (region
between an anode pitch of 200 p m to 500 p m ).The
effect is due to the contribution of the series noise
of the preamplifiers to the final resolution. In this
detector the preamplifiers are external as opposed to ones
integrated on the silicon wafer. The total preamplifier
input capacitance is dominated by the capacitance of
the first transistor and the capacitance of the connection
and is independent of the anode size and pitch. The
amplifier noise of an individual anode channel is thus also
independent of the anode pitch. For smaller anode pitch
the signal is read through more channels adding noise
from more preamplifiers into the position determination.
The worsening of the resolution can be avoided by
integrating the first transistor onto the wafer of the
detector [8]. When the capacitance of the first transistor
is made equal to the anode capacitance the noise of
Figure 5: Photography of the part of the n-side of the
detector under a magnification of 8 times. Anode pitch
is 500 p m .
the read out channel is proportional to the anode size.
The total noise considered for the position determination
depends only on the spread of electrons and there is no
deterioration of the resolution with a finer anode pitch.
C. Implementation
Fig. 4 shows the coexistence of the linear and the
cylindrical geometry on the detector. Due to the limi-
tations in the production of masks for the detector, the
cylindrical detector is in reality a polygon with 120 sides.
The detector is linear within 3" sectors and then there
is a 177' angle between two neighbor sectors. The elec-
tric field is applied on 241 concentric rings (or polygons
with 120 sides) just resolved in Fig. 4. The signal elec-
trons are transported in the middle of the wafer, that is,
about 125 p m from the surface. The electric field i n the
middle of the wafer does not have a sharp angle and the
field under a 177" angle between two sectors is rounded.
At small radii where the linear dimension of a 3 O sec-
tor is less than 200 p m the drift field inside the wafer is
practically cylindrical.
There are other features visible on Fig. 4. The
black spots almost randomly scattered across the silicon

Figure 8: The same part of the detector n-side under a
magnification about 25 times.
detector are integrated resistors of the voltage divider.
There are 240 resistors implanted on each side of the
wafer. An effort was made to place the resistors on the
wafer in such a way that the power dissipated in the
resistors is distributed uniformly across the whole wafer
area. The drift field is constant and therefore the voltage
difference between the neighbour rings is constant. The
area covered by individual rings depends on the radius of
the ring. To dissipate the same power per unit area the
power dissipated per resistor should be proportional to
the radius of the ring. As a compromise, the dissipation
is constant for 12 neighbouring rings and then changes
to some other value for the next 12 rings. In total, there
are 20 different groups of resistors on each side of the
detector. The right values of the drift voltages must be
applied to the rings at the boundary of each group. The
bond wires visible a t the left bottom of Fig. 4 bring the
drift voltages from an outside divider to every 12-th ring.
The bonds at the left hand side of Fig. 4 are connec-
tions between the anodes and the gold plated traces on
a ceramic board. Holes in a FR-4 board above the ce-
ramics are exit holes for the forced radial air flow which
cools the detector.
U1
Figure 7: Negative potential in a radial cross section
(called “Y”) of the detector. Equipotentials imposed at
both surfaces of the detector are the rectifying junctions.
Surface between rectifying junctions is covered by S O z .
Potential a t this surface depends on the global design of
the detector.
111. SURFACE PHENOMENA
The second important feature of the design of the
cylindrical drift detector is the collection of the current
generated on the Si - Si02 interface on the guard (sink)
anode. The design of drift detector was made in such a
way that the electrons generated on the interface are not
collected at the detector anode. The designed detector
collects all electrons generated at the Si - Si02 interface
on a guard anode. The total leakage current collected
on the detector anodes is the sum of the bulk generation
current and junction diffusion currents only.
Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 shows the n-side of the detector
under larger magnifications 8 and 25 times respectively.
Individual rings are well visible. The white rings are
the rectifying p+n junctions. The white appearance of
the junction is due to the aluminum which covers the
junctions. The remaining silicon areas are covered by
thermally grown SiOz.
Fig. 7 shows the negative potential in a radial cross
section of the detector. Equipotentials imposed at both
surfaces of the detector are the rectifying junctions. The
picture shows very clearly the realization of the main
 Figure 8: Detail of negative potential in a cross secti.on
of the detector close to the surface. The potentid is
valley in the potential energy for electrons (negative po-
tential). In this valley the signal electrons are transported
from the point of creation by the ionization of fast parti-
cle to the anode. Now let us concentrate our attention,
however, to secondary valleys located right below sur-
face covered by thermally grown SiOz. The existence
of the secondary valleys is a consequence of fixed posi-
, tive charges in the Si02 close to the Si - Si02 interface.
The presence of these charges bends the energy band in
such a way that electrons are held close to the interface
(simple electrostatic attraction between mobile electrons
within the silicon and fixed positive charges in the oxide
close to the interface).
Potential shown in Fig. 7 was calculated assuming
that there are no electrons a t the Si - Si02 interface
to compensate positive charge of the SiOz. This is
one extreme condition which is hard to realize and is
not very desirable. The surface of silicon under areas
covered by Si02 is depleted, and a relatively large current
is generated on the Si - Si02 interface [9]. Holes
generated at the interface (one can visualize holes as
bubbles on figures where the negative potential is plotted)
are immediately absorbed by surrounding p + n junctions.
Electrons, however, (one can visualize the motion of
electrons as heavy balls) fall to the minimum of the
potential energy right at the interface. To follow these
electrons we have to know the shape of the interface in
the coordinate not shown in Fig. 7.
In a case of cylindrical symmetry or in a fully sym-
metrical geometry of polygon of 120 sides, the potential
is identical at each cross section independent of the az-
imuthal angle 4. Electrons falling onto the interface have
no way to escape. They start to accumulate at the re-
gions of secondary valleys forming an accumulation layer
at the interface. Due to the negative electric charge of
electrons the positive oxide charges are partially compen-
sated and the band bending at the interface decreases.
After a while an equilibrium situation is reached where
there is the maximum density of electron in the accumu-
lation layer at the interface. The boundary between the
secondary valley and the main valley has disappeared at
one point along the secondary valley. Mobile electrons in

Figure 10: Microphotography of the part of the n-side
of the detcctor under a magnification of 170 times. Two
different aluminum layers are visible. The non sintered
aluminum covers Si02 and bridges above the “river” to
connect the sintered aluminum (rougher surface) covering
rectifying junctions. At the bottom left there is a
structure which allows “rivers” current to reach the sink
anode at the outside radius while avoiding signal anodes.
the accumulation layer form almost an equipotential sur-
face and an arrival of one electron anywhere along the
interface leads to the emission of one electron from the
secondary valley into the main valley which is collected
later a t the signal anode of the detector.
To prevent the inclusion of electrons generated a t
Si - Si02 interface from the secondary valley in the
signal anode of the detector a part of the interface
charge must be drained away from the interface before
the maximum electron density is reached. One way
of draining is by breaking the cylindrical symmetry by
incorporating of small openings into the rectifying rings.
Small openings let the electrons accumulated in a region
between two rectifying rings fall into the next inter-ring
region. The negative potential in the next region is
similar to the previous one but the potential difference of
one ring (6 V). Thus electrons generated a t the interface
move from one inter-ring region into the next region. The
625
Figure 11: Microphotography of the “river” region
under a rnagniflcatisn of 600 times. Flow of electrons ia
towards left bottom of the picture. Entrance opening of
the river is always smaller to prevent excess drainage of
electrons from the Si - SiOa interface.
following ring is interrupted as well. These interruptions
form “rivers” where the surface current flows.
Several “rivers” are visible as radial lines in Fig. 6
and Fig. 6 . These “rivers” have to carry away all current
generated a t the Si - Si02 interface. At a small radius of
the detector, the surface is small and there is only little
current which was generated a t a smaller radius to be
carried away. At larger radii there is larger quantity of the
generated current and also current generated upstream
must flow in “rivers”. The number of “rivers” increases
from 2 at the center to 40 at the largest radius of the
detector.
The draining of surface generated current should be
done at a correct rate. Not enough drainage would let
the surface leakage current reach the detector anode.
Too much drainage, however, would deplete larger part
of the interface surface and increase the amount of the
surface leakage current. Fig. 8 shows the detail of the
negative potential a t the interface where there are still
some electrons left at the interface. The potential barrier
to prevent electrons generated at Si - Si02 interface is
626

a
i
e
E
z
a
0
0
0
O
X
0

I A L L ANODES
1 ~ x y ~ x ~ ~ x ~ ~ ~ x - x - x . - x - x - - ~

Slope=7.2hA/cmZ
t I I I I I I T I I I ‘

13 25 37 49 61 73 85 97 1 0 9 121 133145157
I I RING # I I

5 10 15 20 25
s (cm2)

Figure 12: Microphotography of one resistor of the volt-

age divider under a magnification of 600 times. Resistors
are made during the same production step as the rectify-
ing junctions. Resistance of the implant is about 8kn/U.
Changing the width of the connection between two rings
different values of resistance can be obtained.
still present. Conductivity due to the electrons left on the
interface is just right to carry generated electrons from
location of origin to “rivers”. This direction corresponds
to a vertical flow between rectifying junctions as shown
in Fig. 9. Electrons generated a t the upper (bottom)
half of the picture are transported downwards (upwards)
towards the “river”. The electric field along the interface
is small enough that it does not introduce any azimuthal
component of the drift field for signal electrons moving
iu the middle of the main valley in the radial direction.
Fig. 10 shows a “river” terminating at the sink
anode outside signal anodes. The rectifying electrode
circumvallating signal anodes is interrupted between two
anodes to let the surface current to pass signal anodes
and flow into the sink anode. The second layer of non
sintered aluminum covering partially Si02 is visible as
a smooth metallization layer. This layer defines the
potential a t the top of Si02 surface and also makes
bridges across “rivers”. The bridges connect sintered
aluminum a t the top of rectifying junctions of the same
ring after being interrupted by “rivers”. Connections
Figure 13: Dependence of the leakage current flowing
into all signal anodes and the leakage current flowing to
the sink anode on the active sise of the B11 detector.
are needed to put the entire ring a t the same potential.
The second aluminum layer was non sintered, thereby
eliminating the possibility of “spiking” at the oxide cut
corners.
Microphotography of Fig. 11 shows details of ring
interruption to form a “river”. Surface electrons flow
toward the left bottom of the picture. The entrance
opening of the “river” is the part of the river to avoid the
excessive drainage of the surface electrons. Quality of the
alignment and of the photolithography can be seen from
this picture and from the microphotography shown in
Fig. 12. Registration of alignment to 5 2 pm is required
in this design.
IV.RESULTS
A. Tests in Laboratory
Several cylindrical drift detectors were produced at
BNL and TU Munich. Fig. 13 shows the functioning of
the designed collection mechanism for the surface current
qualitatively. The leakage current flowing to the all signal
anodes as well as the leakage current flowing to the sink
 627

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320

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200

160

120

80

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Figure 15: Frequency of hits as a function of the anode

Figrire 14: Leakage current for each of the 360 anodes
of a cylindrical detector B12. The ring # 169 was biased
a t -700 V. The upper curve (left linear scale) shows the
current flowing into the sink anode.
anode are plotted as function of the active size of the
detector. The measurement was done with the detector
B11. This detector has no defect between rings number
13 and number 169 a t the inner radius. The slope of
the leakage current to all signal anodes is 7.2 nA/cm2.
The slope of the leakage current to the sink anode is
180 nA/cm2. The improvement (decrease) of the leakage
current is a factor of 25. We have other indications that
the surface leakage current was drained too hard by about
a factor of 3 which gives a more realistic improvement
factor of 8. We would like to stress that the diversion of
the surface generated leakage current into the sink anode
made the detector less sensitive to potential radiation
damage of the Si - Si02 interface.
Fig. 14 shows the leakage current of individual an-
odes in B12 detector. 90 % of the detector surface was
active and most of the anodes have the leakage current
below 1 nA under operating field and bias.
B. Beam P e r f o r m a n c e
In summer of 1991 the B12 cylindrical detector was
installed into the NA45 Experiment a t the CERN SPS.
number or the azimuthal coordinate. 3O sectors are
well visible. The entries into histogram were selected
according to the information from a silicon pad detector
right in front of the cylindrical silicon drift detector.
Only,events with no hit in an aeimuthal sector in the
pad detector were entered. A hole in the frequency of
hits at arround the anode number 230 corresponds to the
location of the selected pad.
Three figures presented here (Fig. 16, Fig. 16 and Fig. 17)
are preliminary.
V. CONCLUSIONS
An advanced silicon drift detector, a large area
cylindrical drift detector, was designed, produced, tested
and installed in the NA45 experiment. The detector
provides unambiguous pairs of r,+ coordinates for events
with multiplicities up to several hundred. The position
resolution of the detector of 20 p m (rms) in each direction
provides about 2 10’ two-dimensional elements.
Although somewhat complicated, it has been pos-
sible to produce nearly fully operational devices on the
whole area of 3 inch diameter wafers. The surface cur-
rent is efficiently collected by a sink anode as designed.
The observed anode current is primarily bulk generated
current at an average level of 7nA/cm2.
628

160 -
k
I ID

70 -
w -

50 -

40 -

DRllTlYE Dl5lR ALL

Figure 17: Frequency of hits as a function of drift time.

The entries into the histogram were selected according
to the pad detector. This time only events with no hits
between two radii were plotted.

DRl.r[TIUE DISTR ALL 6. Preamplifiers and shapers were developed at BNL

Figure 16: Frequency of hits as a function of drift time.
No selection of entries into the histogram. The increase
of number of events per bin with the increase of the drift
time is due to the physics of the particle production in
the experiment.
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(1990).
9. A.S. Grove, Physics and Technology of Semicondmc-
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-
4. U. Faschingbauer et al., Proposal to the SPSC CERN,
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5. GD type low resistance connectors from Shin-Etsu
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City, CA 94587.