The LHCb VELO Upgrade Module Construction

TL;DR

The paper details the construction, quality assurance, and successful deployment of the new VELO upgrade modules for the LHCb detector, enabling higher luminosity operation and improved vertex detection at the LHC.

Contribution

It presents the design, construction, and quality assurance of the novel double-sided pixelated silicon modules for the VELO upgrade, including innovative cooling and precise assembly techniques.

Findings

Over 99.5% of pixels are fully functional

Achieved a sensor attachment precision of 21 μm

Completed module production and installation on schedule

Abstract

The LHCb detector has undergone a major upgrade for LHC Run 3. This Upgrade I detector facilitates operation at higher luminosity and utilises full-detector information at the LHC collision rate, critically including the use of vertex information. A new vertex locator system, the VELO Upgrade, has been constructed. The core element of the new VELO are the double-sided pixelated hybrid silicon detector modules which operate in vacuum close to the LHC beam in a high radiation environment. The construction and quality assurance tests of these modules are described in this paper. The modules incorporate 200 \mum thick, n-on-p silicon sensors bump-bonded to 130 \nm technology ASICs. These are attached with high precision to a silicon microchannel substrate that uses evaporative CO$_2$ cooling. The ASICs are controlled and read out with flexible printed circuits that are glued to the substrate and wire-bonded to the chips. The mechanical support of the module is given by a carbon fibre plate, two carbon fibre rods and an aluminium plate. The sensor attachment was achieved with an average precision of 21 $\mathrm{\mu m}$, more than 99.5\% of all pixels are fully functional, and a thermal figure of merit of 3 \mathrm{Kcm^{2}W^{-1}}$ was achieved. The production of the modules was successfully completed in 2021, with the final assembly and installation completed in time for data taking in 2022.