The PERCIVAL soft X-ray imager

• With the increased brilliance of state-of-the-art Synchrotron radiation sources and the advent of Free Electron Lasers enabling revolutionary science on atomic length and time scales with EUV to X-ray photons comes an urgent need for suitable photon imaging detectors. Requirements include high frame rates, very large dynamic range, single-photon counting capability with low probability of false positives, and (multi)-megapixels. PERCIVAL ("Pixelated Energy Resolving CMOS Imager, Versatile And Large") is currently being developed by a collaboration of DESY, RAL, Elettra, DLS and Pohang to address this need for the soft X-ray regime. PERCIVAL is a monolithic active pixel sensor (MAPS), i.e. based on CMOS technology. It will be back-thinned to access its primary energy range of 250 eV to 1 keV with target efficiencies above 90%. According to its preliminary specifications, the roughly 10 × 10 cm2, 3.5k × 3.7k monolithic "PERCIVAL13M" sensor will operate at frame rates up to 120 Hz (commensurate with most FELs) and use multiple gains within its 27 μm pixels to measure 1 to ∼ 105 (500 eV) simultaneously-arriving photons. A smaller "PERCIVAL2M" with ∼ 1.4k × 1.5k pixels is also planned. Currently, small-scale back-illuminated prototype systems (160 × 210 pixels of 25 μm pitch) are undergoing detailed testing with X-rays and optical photons. In March 2014, a prototype sensor was tested at 350 eV-2 keV at Elettra's TwinMic beamline. The data recorded include diffraction patterns at 350 eV and 400 eV, knife edge and sub-pixel pinhole illuminations, and comparisons of different pixel types. Another prototype chip will be submitted in fall 2014, first larger sensors could be in hand in late 2015.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Solid state detectors

X-ray detectors

X-ray diffraction detectors

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)