X-ray micro-beam characterization of a small pixel spectroscopic CdTe detector

Abstract

A small pixel, spectroscopic, CdTe detector has been developed at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) for X-ray imaging applications. The detector consists of 80 × 80 pixels on a 250 μm pitch with 50 μm inter-pixel spacing. Measurements with an 241Am γ-source demonstrated that 96% of all pixels have a FWHM of better than 1 keV while the majority of the remaining pixels have FWHM of less than 4 keV. Using the Diamond Light Source synchrotron, a 10 μm collimated beam of monochromatic 20 keV X-rays has been used to map the spatial variation in the detector response and the effects of charge sharing corrections on detector efficiency and resolution. The mapping measurements revealed the presence of inclusions in the detector and quantified their effect on the spectroscopic resolution of pixels.