The STAR Silicon Vertex Tracker: A Large Area Silicon Drift Detector R. Bellwied f ,1 , R. Beuttenmuller a , H. Caines c , W. Chen a , D. DiMassimo a , H. Dyke c , D. Elliot a , V. Eremin a , M. Grau a , G. W. Hoffmann e , T. Humanic c , I. Ilyashenko a , I. Kotov c , H. W. Kraner a , P. Kuczewski a , W.J. Leonhardt a , Z. Li a , C. J. Liaw a , G. LoCurto c , D. Lynn a , R. Minor b , M. Munhoz d , G. Ott a , S. U. Pandey f , C. Pruneau f , V. Rykov f , J. Schambach c , J. Sedlmeir a , B. Soja a , E. Sugarbaker c , J. Takahashi d , R. Willson c a Brookhaven National Laboratory b Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory c Ohio State University d University of Sao Paulo e University of Texas, Austin f Wayne State University Abstract The STAR-SVT (Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC-Silicon Vertex Tracker) is a three barrel microvertex detector based upon silicon drift detector technology. As designed for the STAR-SVT, silicon drift detectors (SDDs) are capable of providing unam- biguous two dimensional hit position measurements with resolutions on the order of 20 μm in each coordinate. In addition a high resolution energy loss measurement in the three layers of the SVT enables good particle identification. We describe fea- tures of the design of the STAR-SVT SDDs and electronics that are motivated by such characteristics. We also detail the mechanical structure, assembly procedures, and performance characteristics of the completed device. 1 Corresponding author. Address: Brookhaven National Laboratory, Bldg. 510A, P.O. Box 5000, Upton, NY 11973. Email:bellwied@physics.wayne.edu Preprint submitted to Elsevier Preprint 19 March 2002