Measuring the X-ray quantum efficiency of a hybrid CMOS detector with 55Fe

Abstract

Charge coupled devices (CCDs) are currently the workhorse focal plane arrays operating aboard many orbiting astrophysics X-ray telescopes, e.g. Chandra, XMM-Newton, Swift, and Suzaku. In order to meet the count rate, power, and mission duration requirements defined by next-generation X-ray telescopes, future detectors will need to be read out faster, consume less power, and be more resistant to radiation and micrometeoroid damage than current-generation devices. The hybrid CMOS detector (HCD), a type of active pixel sensor, is currently being developed to meet these requirements. With a design architecture that involves bump bonding two semiconductor substrates together at the pixel level, these devices exhibit both the high read speed and low power consumption of CMOS readout circuitry and the high quantum efficiency (QE) of a deeply depleted silicon absorber. These devices are expected to exhibit the same excellent, high-energy quantum efficiency (QE) as deep-depletion CCDs (QE>0.9 at 6keV), while at the same time exhibiting superior readout flexibility, power consumption, and radiation hardness than CCDs. In this work we present a QE model for a Teledyne Imaging Sensors HyViSI HCD, which predicts QE=96% at 55Fe source energies (5.89 and 6.49keV). We then present a QE measurement of the modeled device at the same energies, which shows QE=97±5% and is in good agreement with the model.