Performance Characteristics of a High Resolution Si(Li) Detector Using a Time Variant Amplifier and a Pulsed Source of X-Rays

Abstract

Two recent improvements in energy dispersive spectrometry are the development of time variant amplifiers and the introduction of pulsed X-ray sources. Either pulsed X-ray tubes or electron beams with fast beam blanking may be used.Time variant amplifiers designed by Kandiah (1 ,2) used control logic to co-ordinate charge restoration of the detector preamplifier, pole-zero cancellation and baseline restoration. In the pulse shaping circuit, time constants are switched during the processing of each pulse to optimize throughput, baseline stability and pileup rejection. Pulse processing techniques have been discussed by Statham (3) .