AGIPD, a high dynamic range fast detector for the European XFEL

Abstract

AGIPD -(Adaptive Gain Integrating Pixel Detector) is a hybrid pixel X-ray detector developed by a collaboration between Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Paul-ScherrerInstitut (PSI), University of Hamburg and the University of Bonn. The detector is designed to comply with the requirements of the European XFEL. The radiation tolerant Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) is designed with the following highlights: high dynamic range, spanning from single photon sensitivity up to 10 4 12.5keV photons, achieved by the use of the dynamic gain switching technique using 3 possible gains of the charge sensitive preamplifier. In order to store the image data, the ASIC incorporates 352 analog memory cells per pixel, allowing also to store 3 voltage levels corresponding to the selected gain. It is operated in random-access mode at 4.5MHz frame rate. The data acquisition is done during the 99.4ms between the bunch trains. The AGIPD has a pixel area of 200×200 µm 2 and a 500µm thick silicon sensor is used. The architecture 1 Corresponding author. 2015 JINST 10 C01023 principles were proven in different experiments and the ASIC characterization was done with a series of development prototypes. The mechanical concept was developed in the close contact with the XFEL beamline scientists and is now being manufactured. A first single module system was successfully tested at APS.

Serial femtosecond crystallography: A revolution in structural biology

“…In this sense, a second generation of XFEL-capable detectors, the ePix family, is being developed at SLAC for this purpose. In parallel with the development of second generation XFELs, a new generation of detectors are being developed to meet the technical specifications required (such as the AGIPD 152 at European XFEL or the Jungfrou at SwissFEL) 153 .…”

“…This will represent a significant increase of the pulse repetition rate available today. However, the pulses will not be evenly distributed over the time of 1 second but are delivered in form of ten 600 μs pulse trains 152 . This poses further challenges for sample injection as jets have to run very fast during the duration of the pulse train, whereas sample would run without interception with the X-rays in the time between the arrivals of the pulse trains.…”

The ePix10k 2-megapixel hard X-ray detector at LCLS

“…The ePix10k detector shows good performance in the fixed gain modes, and future efforts will focus on carefully characterizing the auto-ranging performance. Pixelwise auto-ranging on a shot-to-shot basis was recently developed for X-ray and other ionizing radiation detection (Freytag et al, 2008;Brau et al, 2012), and shows great promise to extend the dynamic range and improve the signal-to-noise for XFEL purposes (Allahgholi et al, 2015;Mozzanica et al, 2016).…”

Current Status of Single Particle Imaging with X-ray Lasers

“…For fast ADCs, the frame rate will be 10~20 kHz [183,184]. d See reference [185,186] for detailed information. e Keeping the single photon detection capability for X-ray photon energy higher than 6 keV [187].…”