Abstract
Counting, imaging, and spectroscopic measurements of X-rays at low energies used in synchrotron and Free Electron Laser (FEL) science (30 eV up to 2 keV) all require detectors with unique properties. As the penetration depth of low-energy X-rays in, for instance, silicon in the above energy range varies from 40 nm to 10 μm, special attention must be given to the properties of the radiation entrance window. And because the number of generated signal charges (electron-hole pairs) is low (approximately 27 signal charges for 100 eV and 540 for 2 keV), the detector systems must be operated with very low electronic noise. This is especially important if standard imaging and spectroscopy are to be performed simultaneously, at low-signal-level detection, in the presence of experimental and instrument background radiation. As the local photon intensities per unit area can be as high as 105 X-rays/s/pixel, long-term stability, especially radiation hardness, is an important requirement. Given these requirements for readout frame rates below 1 kHz, charge-coupled devices (CCDs) have proven their usefulness in experiments at X-ray Free Electron Laser sources. Two types of CCDs will be described: MOSCCDs (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) and pnCCDs. The basic functional principles will be shown as well as the achieved performance figures, as demonstrated in real experiments. Next, the physical limitations of the measurement precision will be discussed. Finally, attention will be given to some options for future CCD architectures and operations and a trade-off between CCDs and CMOS active pixel sensors.
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Notes
- 1.
The penetration or absorption depth is the length where the incident photon intensity is reduced to 1/e.
- 2.
This is correct in case the signal charge cloud arriving in the potential well of the pixel structure is less than the pixel size.
- 3.
Sensor means: detector chip in combination with on-chip electronics.
- 4.
The peak-to-background (P/B) ratio is defined as the peak intensity at 5.9 keV divided by the average number of counts in the energy range from 800 to 1,200 eV. The P/B ratio is a measure for the instrument and detector background and indicates how well weak X-ray features in the spectrum can be separated from very prominent X-ray lines.
Abbreviations
- ALS:
-
The Advanced Light Source is located in Berkeley, California. It is a third-generation synchrotron light source and national user facility
- AMO:
-
Beamline for Atomic,Molecular and Optical Science at LCLS. The AMO instrument is situated on one of the soft X-ray branches of the LCLS that delivers intense ultrashort pulses of X-rays from the XFEL
- ANKA:
-
ANKA is the Synchrotron Radiation Facility at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
- APS:
-
(a) Active Pixel Sensor, monolithic detector and amplifier structure (b) Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois. It is a third-generation synchrotron light source and national user facility
- ASCA:
-
The Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics is a Japanese X-ray mission launched in 1996 using CCDs for the first time
- ASIC:
-
An Application-Specific Integrated Circuitis an integrated micro-electronics circuit, customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use
- ASTRO-H:
-
Wide energy bandwidth astrophysics Japanese space mission to be launched in 2016
- BepiColombo:
-
ESA’s Mercury mission BepiColombo, named after the Italian physicist Guiseppe Colombo, will be launched in 2016
- BESSY:
-
Berliner Elektronen-Speicherring Gesellschaft für Synchrotronstrahlung. It is a third-generation synchrotron light source and national user facility
- CAMEX:
-
CMOS Amplifier and MultiplEXer. ASIC providing pre-amplification, signal shaping, sample and hold, and serialization of analog signals
- CAMP:
-
Center for Free Electron Laser science – Advanced Study Group Multi-Purpose endstation at LCLS and FLASH
- CCD:
-
Charge Coupled Devices have been used as X-ray detectors since many decades and play and an important role in many applications
- Chandra:
-
American X-ray mission named after Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. The Chandra X-ray Observatory is NASA’s flagship mission for X-ray astronomy, taking its place in the fleet of “Great Observatories”
- CHC:
-
The Charge Handling Capacitydescribes the amount of charge which can be properly collected, stored, and transferred to the readout node
- CMOS:
-
The Complementary Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor process is a technology for fabricating integrated circuits
- CsI(Tl):
-
Scintillator crystal with high stopping power for photons (and other types of radiation):Cesium Iodide doped with Thallium
- CXI:
-
The Coherent X-ray Imaging beam line at LCLS operates with X-raysranging from energies from 5 to 11 keV
- DePFET:
-
The DePFET is a Depleted P-channel Field Effect Transistor. Itis formed in a fully depleted substrate and acts as a sensor, amplifier, and memory node at the same time
- eROSITA:
-
The extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array mission will scan the sky from 0.2 keV to 10 keV with high sensitivity. eROSITA will be launched mid 2016
- ENC:
-
The Equivalent Noise Charge is the fluctuating number of electrons at the input of an amplifier to generate the total noise of the circuit
- EPICpn:
-
The European Photon Imaging Camera with a pnCCD as focal plane detector operates onboard of the XMM-Newton satellite
- ESA:
-
European Space Agency
- ESRF:
-
The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility is a third-generation synchrotron light source and European user facility
- Eu-XFEL:
-
The European XFEL (Eu-XFEL) is a new X-ray free-electron laser facility currently under construction in the north of Germany
- FASTCCD:
-
The FASTCCD is an almost column-parallel readout MOSCCD developed at LBNL
- FLASH:
-
TheFree-Electron Laser in Hamburg was the very first VUV and soft X-ray laser with energies from 30 to 300 eV; operational since 2004
- FZ:
-
Float Zone silicon is very pure silicon obtained by vertical zone melting. The concentrations of light impurities, such as carbon and oxygen, are extremely low
- ISAS:
-
The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science is the Japanese space science research institute
- ISDP:
-
Process for fabrication of thin backside n+ contacts forgood blue response formed by in situ doped polysilicon deposition
- JFET:
-
The junction gate field-effect transistor (JFET) is the simplest type of field-effect transistor. It is a three-terminal semiconductor device that can be used as electronically controlled switch, amplifier, or voltage-controlled resistor
- LAMP:
-
Within the LCLS-ASG-Michigan Project, the original CAMP chamber was copied and optimized for use at LCLS
- LBNL:
-
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California
- LCLS:
-
The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is a free-electron laser facility located at SLAC, Menlo Park, California
- MBE:
-
Molecular beam epitaxy is one of several methods of depositing single crystals on substrates
- MIXS:
-
The Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer aboard BepiColombo analyzes the chemical composition of Mercury’s surface
- MOSCCD:
-
Charge Coupled Device composed of Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor structures
- NASA:
-
National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Space agency of the USA
- NSLS II:
-
The National Synchrotron Light Source II at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY, is a third-generation synchrotron light source and national user facility
- pnCCD:
-
Charge Coupled Devices are composed of rectifying pn diode structures on a fully depleted silicon substrate, back-illuminated with a fully parallel readout architecture
- QE:
-
In our case, the Quantum Efficiency describes the ratio of the number of incoming photons to the number of detected photons
- SACLA:
-
SACLA (SPring-8 Angstrom Compact free electron LAser) is theJapaneseX-ray free electron laser located in Hyogo
- SDD:
-
The Silicon Drift Detector is based on the concept of sideward depletion invented by Gatti and Rehak in 1983. pnCCDs and DePFET active pixel sensors make equally use of sideward depletion
- SLAC:
-
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University located in Menlo Park, California
- SUZAKU:
-
Suzaku is a legendary red bird which guards us from evil and brings us fortune. Japanese X-ray astronomy satellites have been called mostly with the names of birds. SUZAKU was launched in 2005
- SWIFT:
-
Swift is a multi-wavelength observatory dedicated to the study of gamma-ray burst (GRB) science launched in 2004 by NASA
- SXR:
-
The Soft X-ray beam line at LCLS is equipped with a monochromator whose energy rangesfrom 500 to 2,000 eV
- VERITAS:
-
The VERITAS (VErsatile Readout based on Integrated Trapezoidal Analog Shapers) ASIC was developed for the processing of signals from pnCCDs and DePFETs
- XFEL:
-
AnX-ray Free-Electron Laser generates highly coherent intense, short pulses of x-ray light suitable for a variety of scientific research, including chemistry, material science, and studies of macromolecular structure
- XMM-Newton:
-
The X-ray Multi Mirror mission is ESA’s flagship for astrophysics, launched in 1999 from Kourou and funded up to 2018
- XPP:
-
The X-ray pump-probe XPP) instrument predominantly uses ultrashort optical laser pulses to generate transient states of matter which are subsequently probed by hard X-ray pulses from LCLS
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Acknowledgements
Experimental results shown here are from devices which have been designed, fabricated, tested, and operated by PNSensor. Special thanks go to Robert Hartmann who improved the system over the years. The support of all physicists, technicians, and engineers of PNSensor and PNDetector is very much appreciated. The contribution of the Solid State Physics Group of the University of Siegen is acknowledged. I am grateful to Peter Denes (LBL) who supplied the input for the MOSCCD part. The discussions and support of Julia Schmidt (PNSensor) and Jeff Davis (PNDetector) were important for the quality of the paper.
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Strüder, L. (2016). High Speed Imaging and Spectroscopy with Low Energy X-Rays. In: Jaeschke, E., Khan, S., Schneider, J., Hastings, J. (eds) Synchrotron Light Sources and Free-Electron Lasers. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14394-1_38
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