Performance of irradiated and non-irradiated 500 $\mu$ m thick-silicon microstrip detectors

The decision-taken by the CMS experiment to build a tracker entirely based on silicon detectors has made necessary the use of thicker sensors instead of the usual 300 mu m ones for the outer part of the detector. We present first results on the performance of 500 mu m thick detectors, before and after neutron irradiation, bonded to the CMS tracker front-end electronics. Laboratory measurements show that the total collected charge scales linearly with thickness when compared with a 300 mu m module and the measured noise is in good agreement with expectations. The results obtained confirm the feasibility of large area silicon trackers. (7 refs).