Recent progress of the RD50 Collaboration - Development of radiation tolerant tracking detectors

The CERN RD50 Collaboration "Radiation hard semiconductor devices for high luminosity colliders" is undertaking a massive R&D programme across High Energy Physics (HEP) Experiments boundaries to develop silicon sensors with increased radiation tolerance. Highest priority is to provide concepts and prototypes of high performance silicon sensors for the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) Experiments at CERN and other future HEP Experiments operating in severe radiation environments. This paper gives an overview of the RD50 collaboration activities and describes some examples of recent developments. Emphasis is put on the characterization of microscopic radiation induced defects and their impact on the sensor performance, the evaluation and parametrization of electric fields inside irradiated sensors, progress in device modeling using TCAD tools, the use of p-type silicon as strip and pixel sensor material and finally the first steps towards the exploitation of impact ionization (charge multiplication) in irradiated sensors.