Speaker
Description
MALTA is a depleted monolithic active pixel sensor developed in the Tower 180 nm CMOS imaging process.
Monolithic CMOS sensors offer advantages over current hybrid imaging sensors both in terms of increased
tracking performance due to lower material budget but also in terms of ease of integration and construction
costs due to the integration of read-out and active sensor into one chip. Current research and development
efforts are aimed towards radiation hard designs up to 100 Mrad in Total Ionizing Dose (TID) and >1x1015 1
MeV neq/cm² in Non-Ionizing Energy Loss (NIEL). The design of the MALTA sensors was specifically chosen
to achieve radiation hardness up to these requirements and satisfy current and future collider constraints. The
current MALTA pixel architecture employs small electrodes which provide overall smaller noise, higher volt-
age signal and better power performance ratio. To counteract loss of efficiency in pixel corners, modifications
to the Tower process have been implemented. The MALTA sensors have been tested during the 2021 SPS
CERN Test Beam in the MALTA telescope. Additional characterization of MALTA2 samples will also take
place during the 2022 campaign. The telescope ran for the whole duration of the beam and took data in order
to characterize the novel MALTA2 variant and the performance of irradiated samples in terms of efficiency
and cluster size. These campaigns aim to show that MALTA is an interesting prospect for HL-LHC and beyond
collider experiments, providing both very good tracking capabilities and radiation hardness in harsh radiation
environments.
