Semiconductor sensors

Semiconductor sensors have been around since the 1950s and today, every high energy physics experiment has one in its repertoire. In Lepton as well as Hadron colliders, silicon vertex and tracking detectors led to the most amazing physics and will continue doing so in the future. This contribution tries to depict the history of these devices exemplarily without being able to honor all important developments and installations. The current understanding of radiation damage mechanisms and recent R&D topics demonstrating the future challenges and possible technical solutions for the SLHC detectors are presented. Consequently semiconductor sensor candidates for an LHC upgrade and a future linear collider are also briefly introduced. The work presented here is a collage of the work of many individual silicon experts spread over several collaborations across the world.