# ARRAY: An Open Source, Modular and Probe-Card based System with Integrated Switching Matrix for Characterisation of Large Area Silicon Pad Sensors

## TL;DR

ARRAY is an open-source, modular system designed for efficient electrical characterization of large-area silicon pad sensors, enabling realistic biasing and precise measurements crucial for collider detector development.

## Contribution

The paper introduces ARRAY, a novel, cost-effective, modular system with integrated switching matrix for large-area silicon sensor testing, adaptable to various sensor geometries.

## Key findings

- Successfully measured currents from 500 pA to 5 μA
- Achieved capacitance measurement precision better than 0.2 pF
- Demonstrated system's capability with calibration and measurement examples

## Abstract

Silicon pad sensors are proposed as active material in highly granular sampling calorimeters of future collider experiments such as the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) or the International Linear Collider (ILC). The electromagnetic section of these designs often include O(1000 m$^2$) of silicon pad sensors. For the luminosity measurement, a dedicated forward calorimeter called LumiCal is foreseen. More recently, the CMS experiment has decided to adopt the same concept in its endcap calorimeter upgrade for the HL-LHC. The sensors are typically produced from 6- or 8-inch wafers and consist of a few hundred smaller cells, each with an area of O(0.1 to 1 $\text{cm}^2$). For the prototyping phase of these projects, several design choices have to be evaluated while for mass production, thousands of sensors have to be tested for quality control. For the electrical characterisation of these sensors, it is important to bias them under realistic conditions. To fulfil these requirements, ARRAY, a compact, modular and cost efficient system for large area silicon pad sensor characterisation has been developed and successfully commissioned. It consists of two plugin printed circuit boards: an active switching matrix with 512 input channels that holds all controls and a passive probe card that connects to the sensor. The latter can then be adapted to any sensor geometry. All design files are open source. The system has been used to measure currents ranging from 500 pA to 5 $\mu$A and capacitances between 5 pF and 100 pF. A precision of better than 0.2 pF on capacitance measurements in that range can be achieved. Examples of calibration and measurement results for leakage current and capacitance are presented.