Design and performance of the HEXIS CZT detector module

Abstract

A large area (40 cm2) CZT module for space-borne X-ray astronomy applications has been under development at UCSD. This module employs four 32mm x 32mm x 2mm CZT crossed strip detectors with 0.5 mm pitch which are sensitive in the 10-200 keV range. The compact design includes readout and control electronics below the detector plane, which allows for efficient tiling of modules to form large detector planes for wide field of view coded mask imagers, or for efficient packaging within an anticoincidence shield at the focus of a hard X-ray telescope. The module has successfully been shaken on all three axes at 14 g rms to validate the mechanical design for spaceflight applications. Spectral, spatial, and imaging performance is presented.