Leakage current and capacity variation with temperature in silicon detectors of a space calorimeter

Leakage current and capacity dependence on temperature have been measured in the range - 30°C < t < 20°C for several silicon strip detectors. The experimental setup is composed of a copper test box enclosing 16 current-to-voltage converters and a refrigerator to set and control the required temperatures. These measurements were performed for noise minimization for the space calorimeter of the WiZard experiment to be operated on the American space station Freedom. The results show that the overall noise of the electronic readout chain may be significantly reduced by operating the calorimeter at low temperature. © 1991.