Development and implementation of quality control strategies for CMS silicon strip tracker modules

The LHC will explore physics at the energy frontier and will address many open questions in particle physics, like the search for the Higgs boson or Supersymmetry. For both high resolution track and vertex reconstruction is vital. The CMS silicon tracker consists of 15232 detector modules. Production and assembly of these will span two and a half years period, during which the quality control chain has to ensure functionality and reliability of the modules produced. The CMS group in Karlsruhe will produce and qualify 1600 modules. Therefore automatic test systems are developed and test strategies are worked out. Already during the RnD phase, first prototype tests were performed and some weak points of the design were uncovered. Two test stations are built. One focuses on a fast functionality test, including an active thermal cycle. The other focuses on debugging and repair requirements, including additional test options with lasers, radioactive sources, probes and infrared LEDs. For quality control measurements LED are of good use: Besides external signal generation by pulsing, they can be used for constant illumination of sensors, inducing an artifical leakage current. This led to the discovery of gain losses of complete readout chips induced by shorted AC coupling capacitances of several readout channels, which are called pinholes. Therefore pinholes must be unbonded from the front end preamplifier, which requires faultless identificationtechniques for pinholes.