HEXITEC 2 × 2 tiled hard X-ray spectroscopic imaging detector system

HEXITEC is a spectroscopic imaging X-ray detector technology developed at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory for X-ray and γ-ray spectroscopic imaging applications. Each module has 80 × 80 pixels on a 250 μm pixel pitch, and has been implemented successfully in a number of applications. This paper presents the HEXITEC 2 × 2 detector system, a tiled array of 4 HEXITEC modules read out simultaneously, which provides an active area of 16 cm2. Systems have been produced using 1 mm thick Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) and 2 mm thick Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CdZnTe) sensor material. In this paper the system and data processing methods are presented, and the performance of the systems are evaluated. The detectors were energy calibrated using an 241Am sealed source. Three types of charge sharing correction were applied to the data-charge sharing addition (CSA), charge sharing discrimination (CSD), and energy curve correction (ECC) which compensates for energy lost in the inter-pixel region. ECC recovers an additional 34 % of counts in the 59.5 keV peak in CdTe compared to the use of CSD; an important improvement for photon-starved applications. Due to the high frame rate of the camera system (6.3 kHz) an additional End of Frame (EOF) correction was also applied to 6.0 % of events to correct for signals that were readout whilst the signal was still forming. After correction, both detector materials were found to have excellent spectroscopic performance with a mean energy resolution (FWHM) of 1.17 keV and 1.16 keV for CdZnTe and CdTe respectively. These results successfully demonstrate the ability to construct tiled arrays of HEXITEC modules to provide larger imaging areas.

Measurements of charge sharing in a hybrid pixel photon counting CdTe detector

Hybrid pixel radiation detectors working in a single-photon counting mode have gained increasing attention due to their noiseless imaging and high dynamic range. Due to the fact that sensors of different materials can be attached to the readout circuit, they allow operation with a wide range of photon energies. The performance of the single photon counting detectors is limited by pile-up. To allow a detector to work under high flux conditions, the pixel size is reduced, which minimizes detector dead time. However, with smaller pixel sizes the charge sharing effect, a phenomenon that deteriorates both detection efficiency and spatial resolution is more profound. The influence of charge sharing on the detector performance can be quantified using parameterization of the s-curve obtained in the spectral response measurements. The article presents the measurements of the response function of a hybrid pixelated photon counting detector for certain primary energy, which corresponds to the probability of detecting a photon as a function of its energy deposition. The measurements were carried out using an X-ray tube by performing a threshold scan during illumination with X-ray photons of a 1.5 mm and 0.75 mm thick CdTe detector with 100 µm pixel pitch. The charge size cloud depends on the sensor material, the bias voltage, and the sensor thickness. Therefore, the experimental data from a sensor biased with different bias voltages are compared to the theoretical results based on a cascaded model of a single-photon counting segmented silicon detector. The study of the charge sharing influence on the spatial resolution of the CdTe detector will serve for a further study of the possible implementations of the algorithms achieving subpixel resolution, in which the charge sharing becomes the desired effect since the charge division in the pixels is used to interpolate the photon interaction position.

Characterisation of analogue front end and time walk in CMOS active pixel sensor

In this work we investigated a method to determine time walk in an active silicon pixel sensor prototype using Edge-TCT with infrared laser charge injection. Samples were investigated before and after neutron irradiation to 5· 10^14n_ eq/cm^2. Threshold, noise and calibration of the analogue front end were determined with external charge injection. A spatially sensitive measurement of collected charge and time walk was carried out with Edge-TCT, showing a uniform charge collection and output delay in pixel centre. On pixel edges charge sharing was observed due to finite beam width resulting in smaller signals and larger output delay. Time walk below 25 ns was observed for charge above 2000 e^- at a threshold above the noise level. Time walk measurement with external charge injection yielded identical results.

Charge sharing investigation in a Timepix3 (TPX3) detector through ion probing

The phenomenon of charge sharing in pixelated particle detectors and its relationship to a variety of physical parameters is investigated using a Timepix3 (TPX3) detector with a 500 μm thick silicon sensor. A probing technique is used with H, Li, and C ion beams produced at the Tandem Van de Graaff (VdG) accelerator at the University of Montreal (UdeM), as well as alpha particles from an 241Am radioactive source, to determine a direct relationship between particle depth and cluster size. Additionally, the primacy of a particle's energy on the determination of its corresponding cluster's size is confirmed.