Performance of radiation-hard HV/HR CMOS sensors for the ATLAS inner detector upgrades

A major upgrade (Phase II Upgrade) to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), scheduled for 2022, will be brought to the machine so as to extend its discovery potential. The upgraded LHC, called High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), will run with a nominal leveled instantaneous luminosity of $5×10^{34}$ cm$^{−2}$s${−1}$, more than twice the expected luminosity. This unprecedented luminosity will result in higher occupancy and background radiations, which will request the design of a new Inner Tracker (ITk) which should have higher granularity, reduced material budget and improved radiation tolerance. A new pixel sensor concept based on High Voltage and High Resistivity CMOS (HV/HR CMOS) technology targeting the ATLAS inner detector upgrade is under exploration. With respect to the traditional hybrid pixel detector, the HV/HR CMOS sensor can potentially offer lower material budget, reduced pixel pitch and lower cost. Several prototypes have been designed and characterized within the ATLAS upgrade R&D; effort, to investigate the detection and radiation hardness performance of various commercial technologies. An overview of the HV/HR CMOS sensor operation principle is described in this paper. The characterizations of three prototypes with X-ray, proton and neutron irradiation are also given.