Speaker
Description
A new all-silicon tracking detector known as the Inner Tracker (ITk) will replace the current Inner Detector system of the ATLAS experiment in preparation for the High Luminosity LHC. The outermost layers of the ITk will be tiled with ITk Strip modules, where each module is composed of front-end electronics glued to a silicon microstrip sensor. During module pre-production, a critical problem emerged: silicon sensors cracked due to thermal stresses when mounted to local support structures and brought to cold operating temperatures. The primary mitigation strategy involved redesigning the modules to include a new layer of soft glue between the front-end electronics and the silicon sensor to absorb thermal stresses. This redesign necessitated a new R&D phase of the project, including material testing of the added components, developing new processes to integrate the added layers into the module assembly chain, and design validation testing of prototype modules. This presentation will also discuss the key lessons learned to avoid similar failures in future detectors.
