Large Area, High Performance Silicon Drift X-Ray Detectors

137 Large Area, High Performance Silicon Drift X-Ray Detectors--Photon Imaging, Inc., 19355 Business Center Drive, Suite #8, Northridge, CA 91324; (818) 709-2468 Dr. Bradley Patt, Principal Investigator Dr. Jan Iwanczyk, Business Official DOE Grant No. DE-FG03-97ER82450 Amount: $74,880 The goal of this project is to develop new large-area (~ 19 cm^2) energy dispersive x-ray detectors for nuclear physics research using low energy spectroscopy on various accelerator facilities such as Brookhaven National Laboratory. These detectors are expected to yield an order of magnitude improvement in performance over existing detector technologies including those requiring cryogenic cooling, however the new detectors will operate near room temperature. In order to achieve the large active area and high energy resolution the proposed detector will be designed as a closely spaced array of smaller pixels integrated with their own front-end electronics. The detector array will be useful for x-ray energies up to 20 keV. In this application the x-ray detector array will be one of a layer of detectors, the other layer being for higher energy gamma-rays (> 20 keV). A critical objective therefore of this project is to minimize the mass of the detector packaging in order to reduce unwanted radiation scattered off the package onto the gamma-ray detector. The overall objectives for Phase I are to a) develop a closely spaced detector array prototype composed of nineteen 1 cm2 elements; b) develop cost-effective production processing; c) design the detector packaging to minimize the mass and associated electronics behind the detector array; and d) evaluate the array performance against the theoretical performance goals using standard spectroscopy electronics. In Phase 2 we will a) develop finalized detector arrays based upon the Phase 1 studies and deploy them at the Nations nuclear research facilities. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The potential markets for the devices in Phase III include replacement of many existing detectors based on cryogenic Si(Li) and High Purity Germanium, used in many commercial applications such as environmental contamination monitoring and process control and materials identification as well as scientific applications such as nuclear, high energy and heavy-ion physics, and synchrotron light source experiments and space applications.