Noise measurement on Preshower Si sensors

Throughout the past couple of years when we were designing the Preshower silicon sensors we have noticed that some of them have strips with a noise higher than the average and not correlated to the leakage current. In order to investigate this effect we have developed a set-up for noise measurement on wafers and diced sensors that does not require bonding. The set-up is based on the DeltaStream chip coupled to a probe card with 32 pins at a pitch of 1.9 mm. All the digital electronics, including the analogue-to-digital converter and a microprocessor, is placed on a motherboard which communicates with a PC via an RS232 line. We have tested 45 sensors and found that some strips which have an above average noise, also have a higher relative current increase as a function of voltage, deltaI/(I deltaV), even though their leakage current is below 50 nA. We also observed that on these strips th e breakdown occurs within about 60 V from the onset of the noise. The source of this noise is not yet clear and the investigation is going on.