SWAD: inherent photon counting performance of amorphous selenium multi-well avalanche detector

Abstract

Photon counting detectors (PCDs) have the potential to improve x-ray imaging, however they are still hindered by several performance limitations and high production cost. By using amorphous Selenium (a-Se) the cost of PCDs can be significantly reduced compared to crystalline materials and enable large area detector fabrication. To overcome the problem of low carrier mobility and low charge conversion gain in a-Se, we are developing a novel direct conversion a- Se field-Shaping multi-Well Avalanche Detector (SWAD). SWAD circumvents the charge transport limitation by using a Frisch grid built within the readout circuit, reducing charge collection time to ~200 ns. Field shaping permits depth independent avalanche gain in wells, resulting in total conversion gain that is comparable to Si and CdTe. In the present work we investigate the effects of charge sharing and energy loss to understand the inherent photon counting performance for SWAD at x-ray energies used in breast imaging applications (20-50keV). The energy deposition profile for each interacting x-ray was determined with Monte Carlo simulation. For the energy ranges we are interested in, photoelectric interaction dominates, with a k-fluorescence yield of approximately 60%. Using a monoenergetic 45 keV beam incident on a target pixel in 400um of a-Se, our results show that only 20.42 % and 22.4 % of primary interacting photons have kfluorescence emissions which escape the target pixel for 100um and 85um pixel sizes respectively, demonstrating SWAD’s potential for high spatial resolution applications.