Improving the spatial resolution of soft X-ray detection using an Electron-Multiplying Charge-Coupled Device

Soman, Matthew R.; Hall, D.; Tutt, James H.; Murray, Neil J.; Holland, Andrew D.; Schmitt, Thorsten; Raabe, Jörg; Schmitt, B.

doi:10.1088/1748-0221/8/01/c01046

Cited by 29 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…In the field of synchrotron research it has been demonstrated that the EM-CCD can bring many benefits to spatially dispersive soft X-ray spectrometers [24][25][26][27][28] . The ability to operate the spectrometer in photon-counting mode due to the high-speed readout with sub-electron readout noise allows centroiding techniques to be used.…”

Section: Direct Detectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ability to operate the spectrometer in photon-counting mode due to the high-speed readout with sub-electron readout noise allows centroiding techniques to be used. The use of photoncounting and centroiding allows order of magnitude improvements to be made to the spatial resolution, impacting directly on the spectral resolution achievable with the spectrometer [24][25][26][27][28] , both in ground-based applications and in space 29 .…”

Section: Direct Detectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Developing a high-resolution x-ray imager using electron-multiplying (EM) CCDs

et al. 2013

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Applications at synchrotron facilities such as macromolecular crystallography and high energy X-ray diffraction require high resolution imaging detectors with high dynamic range and large surface area. Current systems can be split into two main categories: hybrid pixel detectors and scintillator-coupled Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs). Whilst both have limitations, CCD-based systems (coupled to fibre-optics to increase imaging area) are often used in these applications due to their small pixels and the high resolution. Electron-Multiplication CCDs (EM-CCDs) are able to suppress the readout noise associated with increased readout speed offering a low noise, high speed detector solution. A previous pilot study using a small-area (8 mm × 8 mm) scintillator-coupled EM-CCD found that through high frame-rates, low noise and novel uses of photon-counting, resolution could be improved from over 80 µm to 25 µm at 2 fps. To further improve this detector system, high speed readout electronics can be used alongside a fibre-optic taper and EM-CCD to create a "best of both worlds" solution consisting of the high resolution of a CCD, along with the low noise, high speed (high dynamic range) and large effective area of pixel detectors. This paper details the developments in the study and discusses the latest results and their implication on the system design.

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Section: Direct Detectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Direct Detectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing a high-resolution x-ray imager using electron-multiplying (EM) CCDs

et al. 2013

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“…Similar experiments were repeated with the CCD97 20 , a standard back-illuminated EM-CCD from e2v technologies with 16 µm pixels, across four energies: 530 eV, 680 eV, 850 eV and 1000 eV 21,22 . With the EM-CCD, it is possible to reduce the readout noise to the sub-electron level through increasing the gain, albeit with an increase in the noise on the signal levels themselves from the associated Modified Fano Factor (Section 5).…”

Section: Em-ccd Camera Development For Saxesmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-resolution soft x-ray spectrometry using the electron-multiplying charge-coupled device (EM-CCD)

et al. 2013

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The Electron-Multiplying Charge-Coupled Device (EM-CCD) shares a similar structure to the CCD except for the inclusion of a gain register that multiplies signal before the addition of read-noise, offering sub-electron effective readnoise at high frame-rates.EM-CCDs were proposed for the dispersive spectrometer on the International X-ray Observatory (IXO) to bring sub-300 eV X-rays above the noise, increasing the science yield. The high-speed, low-noise performance of the EM-CCD brought added advantages of reduced dark current and stray-light per frame, reducing cooling and filtering requirements. To increase grating efficiency, several diffracted spectral orders were co-located so the inherent energy resolution of the detector was required for order separation. Although the spectral resolution of the EM-CCD is degraded by the gain process, it was shown that the EM-CCD could achieve the required separation.The RIXS spectrometer at the Advanced Resonant Spectroscopy beamline (ADRESS) of the Swiss Light Source (SLS) at the Paul Scherrer Institute currently uses a CCD, with charge spreading between pixels limiting the spatial resolution to 24 µm (FWHM). Through improving the spatial resolution below 5 µm alongside upgrading the grating, a factor of two energy resolution improvement could theoretically be made. With the high-speed, low-noise performance of the EM-CCD, photon-counting modes could allow the use of centroiding techniques to improve the resolution. Using various centroiding techniques, a spatial resolution of 2 µm (FWHM) has been achieved experimentally, demonstrating the benefits of this detector technology for soft X-ray spectrometry. This paper summarises the use of EM-CCDs from our first investigations for IXO through to our latest developments in ground-based testing for synchrotron-research and looks beyond to future possibilities.

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“…Measurements of centroiding 850 eV and 1000 eV X-ray events detected with an EM-CCD has demonstrated achievable spatial resolutions better than 2.2 μm (FWHM) when averaged across the pixel's geometric area [7]. Due to the experimental setup, the measurement includes an unknown contribution from the X-ray source's size.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%