Test results and prospects for RD53A, a large scale 65 nm CMOS chip for pixel readout at the HL-LHC

The CERN RD53 collaboration was founded to tackle the extraordinary challenges associated with the design of pixel readout chips for the innermost layers of particle trackers at future high energy physics experiments. Around 20 institutions are involved in the collaboration, which has the support of both ATLAS and CMS experiments. The goals of the collaboration include the comprehensive understanding of radiation effects in the 65 nm technology, the development of tools and methodology to efficiently design large complex mixed signal chips and, ultimately, the development of a full size readout chip featuring a 400 × 400 pixel array with 50μm pitch. In August 2017, the collaboration submitted the large scale chip RD53A, integrating a matrix of 400 × 192 pixels and embodying three different analog front-end designs. This work discusses the characteristic of the RD53A chip, with some emphasis on the analog processors, and presents the first test results on the pixel array.