Characterization of Silicon-On-Diamond chip with ionizing radiation

In this work we report on the characterization with ionizing radiation sources of a CMOS active pixel radiation sensor (RAPS03) thinned down to 40um and bonded to a slice of diamond to form a rugged Silicon-On-Diamond structure. The bonding process is based on an innovative laser technique which scans the silicon-diamond interface with a 20 ps pulsed 355 nm laser beam. The goal of the work is to demonstrate that the bonding procedure does not damage the CMOS devices, paving the way for a possible alternative to bump bonding procedures between diamond substrates and readout chips. To this purpose, the Silicon-On-Diamond device and a standard (e.g. un-thinned) RAPS03 sensor have been tested in parallel with and without ionizing radiation sources (photons, electrons) to compare their characteristics and to study their differences. The Silicon-On-Diamond device has shown to be fully functional and no differences have been found between the responses of the two sensors, within the statistical variations due to the CMOS fabrication process.