Development of a large array of Silicon Drift Detectors for high-rate synchrotron fluorescence spectroscopy

Abstract

An array of small-area Silicon Drift Detectors (SDD), named Hera, has been developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in the past few years. Its primary application is high-rate spectroscopy at synchrotrons. Each SDD pixel is a 1 mm × 1 mm square to match the footprint of the original diode-based pixel detector called Maia, which was developed for the same application. The replacement of the diode with an SDD allows for better energy resolution at short shaping times and an increased stability of the detector. 32, 96, and 384-channel arrays were designed and fabricated and achieved a Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM) as low as 176 eV at 5.9 keV with peaking time of 1 μs at -13°C. The sensor design, simulation, fabrication, its readout system, and its spectroscopic performance are reported.

2023 atomic spectrometry update – a review of advances in X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and its special applications

“…An exciting development at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL, USA) for high-count-rate XRF spectrometry detection was 34 the implementation of detector arrays consisting of a large number of small-area SDD pixels. The SDDs, which consisted of arrays of 32, 96 and 384-channels of 1 × 1 mm pixels, replaced the original diode-based pixel detector called Maia.…”

A Novel Position-Sensitive Linear Winding Silicon Drift Detector

“…Since its invention by Gatti and Rehak [1], the Silicon Drift Detector (SDD) has found extensive applications in various fields, including high-energy physics [2][3][4], astrophysics [5,6], light sources for synchronizer [7,8], medical imaging [9][10][11], elemental analysis [12][13][14], and scientific research [15][16][17]. The SDD shows exceptional qualities such as higher energy resolution, excellent position resolution, a high signal-to-noise ratio, a thin dead layer, and a rapid response time, and the device can be cooled via electrical methods.…”