High Luminosities planned at colliders of the next decades pose very severe requirements on vertex detector systems in terms of space resolution (tens of μm), radiation hardness (some 1016 1 MeV neq cm-2 and some Grad) and data throughput (Tbit/s). Expected event pile-up (of the order of 100) introduces the need to add high resolution time measurements (100 ps) already at the single pixel level. This demand pushes towards a new concept of vertex detector system, where all these features must operate at the same time. The Padova INFN Section is involved in the TIMESPOT collaboration (INFN Call Gr V), which has the purpose to finalize existing technologies in the direction of such an innovative tracking apparatus. In particular, the Padova team will work on the silicon sensors characterization and in the validation for functional parameters (charge collection efficiency, intrinsic time resolution, radiation resistance). 3D silicon sensors are one of the two solutions under investigation for the TIMESPOT project. With the present proposal we plan to use the AN-Microbeam facility, Legnaro National Laboratories – I.N.F.N., in order to investigate the 3D sensors in terms of timing and charge collection performances as a function of the particle hit position, as well as to study the effect of a localized bulk damage in the silicon substrate.