Performance of an energy resolving X-ray pixel detector

We have built a back-illuminated, silicon X-ray detector with 16×16 pixels. This is bump-bonded to an integrated circuit containing a corresponding array of pre-amplifiers. The bump-bonded unit is wire bonded to two 128 channel integrated circuits which have signal shaping, peak-hold and sparcification logic. These integrated circuits output the analogue value of the individual X-ray and the address of the 300 μm×300 μm pixel. The system has previously demonstrated X-ray spectroscopy measurement in the 5–40 keV range with a resolution of 1 keV FWHM. This paper describes the performance of the system used in an X-ray diffraction experiment performed on the Daresbury Synchrotron Radiation Source. The second part demonstrates the successful operation of this pixellated detector for spectroscopy. In this part, the variation among the pixel outputs is accounted for without significantly affecting the noise performance.