Energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) is a rapid, straightforward method to determine sample elemental composition. A spectrum can be collected in a few minutes or less, and elemental content can be determined easily if the detector has adequate energy resolution. Radioactive alpha emitters, however, emit X-rays during the alpha decay process that complicates spectral interpretation. Thi...

Recent advances in X-ray detector technology have resulted in the introduction of segmented detectors composed of many small detector modules tiled together to cover a large detection area. Due to mechanical tolerances and the desire to be able to change the module layout to suit the needs of different experiments, the pixels on each module might not align perfectly on a regular grid. Several d...

A double-layer silicon detector consisting of two 500μm-thick silicon PIN photodiodes with independent readouts was mounted in a vacuum chamber and tested with X-ray sources. The detector is sensitive from 1–30 keV with an effective area of 6 mm. The detector performs best at −35 ◦C with an energy resolution of 220 eV (FWHM, full width at half maximum) at 5.9 keV, and is able to operate at room...

A method to utilize CdZnTe (CZT) detectors in diagnostic x-ray spectroscopy is described in this article. Spectral distortion due to transmission of primary x rays, the escape of cadmium- and tellurium-K fluorescent x rays, and tailing was severe in measured x-ray spectra. Therefore, correction for the distortion was performed with the stripping method using response functions. The response fun...

How does it work? During a mammogram, a patient’s breast is placed on a flat support plate and compressed with a parallel plate called a paddle. An x-ray machine produces a small burst of x-rays that pass through the breast to a detector located on the opposite side. The detector can be either a photographic film plate, which captures the x-ray image on film, or a solid-state detector, which tr...

This pathway describes the development of soft gamma-ray/hard x-ray detector arrays at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC, or Goddard), through a collaboration between the gamma-ray spectroscopy group and the detector branch. The Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CdZnTe, or CZT) detectors which resulted from this decade-long development were first flown on the wildly successful SWIFT mission in 200...

X-ray absorption spectral (XAS) analysis is performed with a combination of a 9 V dry electric battery X-ray generator and a portable Si PIN X-ray detector. The calcium K edge (4.0 keV) in paper is measured with a grazing incidence geometry, which suppressed the artifact due to the Kalpha X-ray fluorescence peak at 3.5 keV. The 9 V dry battery X-ray emitter is useful for portable XAS measurements.

A low-cost Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) 4H-SiC 0.06 mm2 UV p-n photodiode was coupled to a low-noise charge-sensitive preamplifier and used as photon counting X-ray spectrometer. The photodiode/spectrometer was investigated at X-ray energies from 4.95 keV to 21.17 keV: a Mo cathode X-ray tube was used to fluoresce eight high-purity metal foils to produce characteristic X-ray emission lines w...

Dynamic X-ray studies can reach temporal resolutions limited by only the X-ray pulse duration if the detector is fast enough to segregate synchrotron pulses. An analog integrating pixel array detector with in-pixel storage and temporal resolution of around 150 ns, sufficient to isolate pulses, is presented. Analog integration minimizes count-rate limitations and in-pixel storage captures succes...

The source characteristics of the European XFEL and the planned experimental facilities that are relevant for the X-ray detectors are presented, and the requirements for the 2dimensional X-ray Detectors are stated and explained. It is clear that, although these requirements will evolve with time, they demand new detector concepts to be developed. Three X-ray detector development projects have b...