Production and assembly of the ALICE silicon drift detectors

{The ALICE experiment at the LHC will study collisions of heavy-ions at a centre-of-mass energy similar to 5.5 TeV per nucleon. The main aim of the experiment is to study in detail the behaviour of nuclear matter at high densities and temperatures, in view of probing deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration. Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs) have been selected to equip the two intermediate layers of the ALICE Inner Tracking System (ITS) {[}ALICE Collaboration, Technical Design Report, CERN/LHCC 99-12], since they couple a very good multi-track capability with dE/dx information and excellent spatial resolution as described in {[}E. Gatti, P. Rehak, Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 225 (1984) 608; S. Beole, et al., Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 377 (1996) 393; S. Beole, et al., Il Nuovo Cimento 109A (9) (1996)]. In this paper we describe the different components of the SDD system as well as the different procedure of the system assembly. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.}