High energy X-ray imaging technology

X-ray spectroscopy is a powerful experimental technique that provides qualitative information about the elemental composition and internal stresses and strain within a specimen.

High energy X-rays have the ability to penetrate deeply into materials allowing the examination of dense objects such as welds in steel, geological core sections bearing oil or gas or for the internal observation of chemical reactions inside heavy plant or machinery.

The favorable charge transport properties and high electrical resistivity of CdTe and CdZnTe have made them ideally suited to applications requiring spectroscopy at higher X-ray energies.

The HEXITEC application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) was developed for the consortium by the Science and Technology Facilities Council Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

At this speed the detector system was able to deliver per pixel X-ray spectroscopy with an energy resolution of <1keV but was limited to fluxes of 104 photons s−1 mm−2.

The first ASICs were delivered in 2022 and are currently undergoing testing at the Science and Technology Facilities Council Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Diamond Light Source.

X-rays and gamma rays interacting within the detector layer form charge clouds of electron-hole pairs which drift from the cathode to the anode pixels.