The development of n-on-p "edgeless" planar pixel sensors being fabricated at
FBK (Trento, Italy), aimed at the upgrade of the ATLAS Inner Detector for the
High Luminosity phase of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC), is reported. A
characterizing feature of the devices is the reduced dead area at the edge,
achieved by adopting the "active edge" technology, based on a deep etched
trench, suitably doped to make an ohmic contact to the substrate. The project
is presented, along with the active edge process, the sensor design for this
first n-on-p production and a selection of simulation results, including the
expected charge collection efficiency after radiation fluence of 1×1015neq/cm2 comparable to those expected at HL-LHC (about
ten years of running, with an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb−1) for the
outer pixel layers. We show that, after irradiation and at a bias voltage of
500 V, more than 50% of the signal should be collected in the edge region; this
confirms the validity of the active edge approach.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Nucl. Instr. and Meth.