MALTA: a CMOS pixel sensor with asynchronous readout for the ATLAS High-Luminosity upgrade

Radiation hard silicon sensors are required for the upgrade of the ATLAS tracking detector for the High- Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) at CERN. A process modification in a standard 0.18 μm CMOS imaging technology combines small, low-capacitance electrodes (∼2 fF for the sensor) with a fully depleted active sensor volume. This results in a radiation hardness promising to meet the requirements of the ATLAS ITk outer pixel layers (1.5 × 1015 neq /cm2 ), and allows to achieve a high signal-to-noise ratio and fast signal response, as required by the HL-LHC 25 ns bunch crossing structure. The radiation hardness of the charge collection to Non-Ionizing Energy Loss (NIEL) has been previ…