Study of Silicon Pixel Sensors for Synchrotron Radiation Detection

The silicon pixel sensor (SPS) is one of the key components of hybrid pixel single-photon-counting detectors for synchrotron radiation X-ray detection (SRD). In this paper, the design, fabrication, and characterization of SPSs for single beam X-ray photon detection is reported. The designed pixel sensor is a p+-in-n structure with guard-ring structures operated in full-depletion mode and is fabricated on 4-inch, N type, 320 mu m thick, high-resistivity silicon wafers by a general Si planar process. To achieve high energy resolution of X-rays and obtain low dark current and high breakdown voltage as well as appropriate depletion voltage of the SPS, a series of technical optimizations of device structure and fabrication process are explored. With optimized device structure and fabrication process, excellent SPS characteristics with dark current of 2 nA/cm(2), full depletion voltage < 50 V and breakdown voltage > 150 V are achieved. The fabricated SPSs are wire bonded to ASIC circuits and tested for the performance of X-ray response to the 1W2B synchrotron beam line of the Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility. The measured S-curves for SRD demonstrate a high discrimination for different energy X-rays. The extracted energy resolution is high (< 20% for X-ray photon energy > 10 keV) and the linear properties between input photo energy and the equivalent generator amplitude are well established. It confirmed that the fabricated SPSs have a good energy linearity and high count rate with the optimized technologies. The technology is expected to have a promising application in the development of a large scale SRD system for the Beijing Advanced Photon Source.