Characterisation of Reticon and Hamamatsu Photodiode array and the subsequent development of high performance VME-based detector systems optimised for Energy Dispersive EXAFS

Energy Dispersive EXAFS is an established and successful technique employed at Daresbury Laboratory for the study of dynamic experiments. At the heart of this technique is an in house developed high-performance VME-based detector system using a photodiode array. This system originally used a Reticon RL1024S array but extensive investigation of three other photodiode arrays namely the Reticon 512T, 512SB and the Hamamatsu S3904 has enabled their characterisation and the subsequent development of optimised drive and signal processing electronics. This has provided two further systems which exhibit improved signal to noise, excellent linearity and increased operational speed.