SILICON DEVICES FOR CHARGED-PARTICLE TRACK AND VERTEX DETECTION

The discovery of relatively long-lived charmed particles in 1976 promp ted physicists to reexamine the superb properties of semiconductor det ectors for energy and position measurements. In the early 1980s the fi rst silicon strip detectors were successfully used as charged-particle track and vertex detectors to filter the decays of charmed particles out of the huge debris of hadrons produced in proton-nucleus interacti ons. The successful application of these devices soon led to proposals to use them also in colliding beam experiments. These initiatives res ulted in an intense research and development program that focused on c ustom-designed, very highly integrated readout electronics and low-mas s but high-stability support structures and that sought to characteriz e the damaging effects of ionizing radiation to be encountered in high -rate accelerators. In this article we first outline the basics of sem iconductor physics and then give a detailed description of silicon str ip detectors, pixel devices, and novel detector structures currently u nder development. The damaging effects of ionizing radiation on both t he detecting elements and the readout electronics are briefly addresse d. The problems encountered in moving from a single semiconductor dete ctor element to a large detector system to be used for research in ele mentary particle physics are illustrated by the discussion of two larg e-scale experimental applications: a state-of-the-art fixed-target exp eriment and a colliding-beam experiment.