Room-temperature 2D X-ray imaging with the controlled-drift detector

Abstract

The controlled-drift detector is a single-photon counting X-ray imaging silicon detector that features excellent energy and time resolution. Its distinctive feature is the readout of the signal charge packets stored in each pixel column by means of an electrostatic field in few /spl mu/s. The drift time of the charge packet identifies the pixel of incidence. Several one-dimensional flat images of single pixel columns have been acquired to investigate the achievable position resolution and the improvement of the energy resolution at high frame rates (up to 125 kHz). At 62.5 kHz, the room-temperature energy resolution at the Mn K/spl alpha/ line is better than 300 eV full-width at half-maximum. The first two-dimensional X-ray images of different masks carried out at frame frequencies in the range 10-100 kHz, both with radioactive and synchrotron light sources, will be presented.