Noise measurement on Preshower Si sensors

Abstract

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