0000000000060840
AUTHOR
Martin Hilchenbach
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…
DEPFET based Instrumentation for the MIXS focal plane on BepiColombo
BepiColombo, ESA's fifth cornerstone mission, is a planetary exploration mission to Mercury. On board of BepiColombo's Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), the MIXS instrument will perform a complete X-ray fluorescence analysis of Mercury's crust with unprecedented spectral and spatial resolution. This is achieved by using a lightweight X-ray mirror system and by using of DEPFET based Macropixel devices as X-ray detectors. DEPFET based Macropixel detectors combine the advantages of the DEPFETs, like flexible readout modes, Fano-limited energy resolution and low power consumption, with the properties of the drift detectors, like arbitrary scalable pixel size and geometry. In addition, the excell…