0000000000060838
AUTHOR
Jonas Reiffers
DEPFET Macropixel Detectors for MIXS: First Electrical Qualification Measurements
The Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (MIXS) is one of the instruments on board the Mercury Planetary Orbiter of the fifth European Space Agency (ESA) cornerstone mission BepiColombo. This spectrometer comprises two instruments and allows imaging X-ray spectroscopy of the Mercurian surface. The focal plane arrays for the energy and spatial resolved detection of X-rays are based on depleted P-channel FET (DEPFET) macropixel detectors. We report on the first electrical qualification measurements of DEPFET macropixel flight hardware, which are done at room temperature. The measurement of the transistor properties of all DEPFET pixels allows the selection of 100% electrically defect-free devic…
The IXO Wide-Field Imager
The Wide Field Imager (WFI) of the International X-ray Observatory (IXO) is an X-ray imaging spectrometer based on a large monolithic DePFET (Depleted P-channel Field Effect Transistor) Active Pixel Sensor. Filling an area of 10 × 10 cm² with a format of 1024 × 1024 pixels it will cover a field of view of 18 arcmin. The pixel size of 100 × 100 μm² corresponds to a fivefold oversampling of the telescope's expected 5 arcsec point spread function. The WFI's basic DePFET structure combines the functionalities of sensor and integrated amplifier with nearly Fano-limited energy resolution and high efficiency from 100 eV to 15 keV. The development of dedicated control and amplifier ASICs allows for…
The wide-field imager for IXO: status and future activities
The Wide Field Imager (WFI) of the International X-ray Observatory (IXO) is an X-ray imaging spectrometer based on a large monolithic DePFET (Depleted P-channel Field Effect Transistor) Active Pixel Sensor. Filling an area of 10 x 10 cm2 with a format of 1024 x 1024 pixels it will cover a field of view of 18 arcmin. The pixel size of 100 x 100 μm2 corresponds to a fivefold oversampling of the telescope's expected 5 arcsec point spread function. The WFI's basic DePFET structure combines the functionalities of sensor and integrated amplifier with nearly Fano-limited energy resolution and high efficiency from 100 eV to 15 keV. The development of dedicated control and amplifier ASICs allows for…
Development of the wide field imager for Athena
The WFI (Wide Field Imager) instrument is planned to be one of two complementary focal plane cameras on ESA's next X-ray observatory Athena. It combines unprecedented survey power through its large field of view of 40 arcmin x 40 arcmin together with excellent count-rate capability (>= 1 Crab). The energy resolution of the silicon sensor is state-of-the-art in the energy band of interest from 0.2 keV to 15 keV, e.g. the full width at half maximum of a line at 6 keV will be <= 150 eV until the end of the nominal mission phase. This performance is accomplished by using DEPFET active pixel sensors with a pixel size of 130 μm x 130 μm well suited to the on-axis angular resolution of 5 arcsec of…
The DEPFET based Focal Plane Detectors for MIXS on BepiColombo
X-ray detectors based on arrays of DEPFET macropixels, which consist of a silicon drift detector combined with a detector/amplifier structure DEPFET as readout node, provide a convenient and flexible way to adapt the pixel size of a focal plane detector to the resolving power of any given X-ray optical system. Macropixels combine the traditional benefits of an SDD, like scalability, arbitrary geometry and excellent QE even in the low energy range, with the advantages of DEPFET structures: Charge storage capability, near Fano-limited energy resolution, low power consumption and high speed readout. Being part of the scientific payload of ESA's BepiColombo mission, the MIXS instrument will be …
First results from electrical qualification measurements on DEPFET pixel detector
We report on the first results from a new setup for electrical qualification measurements of DEPFET pixel detector matrices. In order to measure the transistor properties of all pixels, the DEPFET device is placed into a benchtest setup and electrically contacted via a probecard. Using a switch matrix, each pixel of the detector array can be addressed individually for characterization. These measurements facilitate to pre-select the best DEPFET matrices as detector device prior to the mounting of the matrix and allow to investigate topics like the homogeneity of transistor parameters on device, wafer and batch level in order to learn about the stability and reproducibility of the production…