D.D. Duarte

A 10 cm × 10 cm CdTe Spectroscopic Imaging Detector based on the HEXITEC ASIC

The 250 μ m pitch 80x80 pixel HEXITEC detector systems have shown that spectroscopic imaging with an energy resolution of <1 keV FWHM per pixel can be readily achieved in the range of 5–200 keV with Al-pixel CdTe biased to −500 V. This level of spectroscopic imaging has a variety of applications but the ability to produce large area detectors remains a barrier to the adoption of this technology. The limited size of ASICs and defect free CdTe wafers dictates that building large area monolithic detectors is not presently a viable option. A 3-side buttable detector module has been developed to cover large areas with arrays of smaller detectors. The detector modules are 20.35 × 20.45 mm with CdTe bump bonded to the HEXITEC ASIC with coverage up to the edge of the module on three sides. The fourth side has a space of 3 mm to allow I/O wire bonds to be made between the ASIC and the edge of a PCB that routes the signals to a connector underneath the active area of the module. The detector modules have been assembled in rows of five modules with a dead space of 170 μ m between each module. Five rows of modules have been assembled in a staggered height array where the wire bonds of one row of modules are covered by the active detector area of a neighboring row. A data acquisition system has been developed to digitise, store and output the 24 Gbit/s data that is generated by the array. The maximum bias magnitude that could be applied to the CdTe detectors from the common voltage source was limited by the worst performing detector module. In this array of detectors a bias of −400 V was used and the detector modules had 93 % of pixels with better than 1.2 keV FWHM at 59.5 keV. An example of K-edge enhanced imaging for mammography was demonstrated. Subtracting images from the events directly above and below the K-edge of the Iodine contrast agent was able to extract the Iodine information from the image of a breast phantom and improve the contrast of the images. This is just one example where the energy spectrum per pixel can be used to develop new and improve existing X-ray imaging techniques.

Investigating the suitability of GaAs:Cr material for high flux X-ray imaging

Semi-insulating wafers of GaAs material with a thickness of 500μm have been compensated with chromium by Tomsk State University. Initial measurements have shown the material to have high resistivity (3 × 109Ωcm) and tests with pixel detectors on a 250 μm pitch produced uniform spectroscopic performance across an 80 × 80 pixel array. At present, there is a lack of detectors that are capable of operating at high X-ray fluxes (> 108 photons s-1 mm-2) in the energy range 5–50 keV. Under these conditions, the poor stopping power of silicon, as well as issues with radiation hardness, severely degrade the performance of traditional detectors. While high-Z materials such as CdTe and CdZnTe may have much greater stopping power, the formation of space charge within these detectors degrades detector performance. Initial measurements made with GaAs:Cr detectors suggest that many of its material properties make it suitable for these challenging conditions. In this paper the radiation hardness of the GaAs:Cr material has been measured on the B16 beam line at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron. Small pixel detectors were bonded to the STFC Hexitec ASIC and were irradiated with 3 × 108 photons s-1 mm-2 monochromatic 12 keV X-rays up to a maximum dose of 0.6 MGy. Measurements of the spectroscopic performance before and after irradiation have been used to assess the extent of the radiation damage.

Interconnect and bonding techniques for pixelated X-ray and gamma-ray detectors

In the last decade, the Detector Development Group at the Technology Department of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), U.K., established a variety of fabrication and bonding techniques to build pixelated X-ray and γ-ray detector systems such as the spectroscopic X-ray imaging detector HEXITEC [1]. The fabrication and bonding of such devices comprises a range of processes including material surface preparation, photolithography, stencil printing, flip-chip and wire bonding of detectors to application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC). This paper presents interconnect and bonding techniques used in the fabrication chain for pixelated detectors assembled at STFC. For this purpose, detector dies (~ 20× 20 mm2) of high quality, single crystal semiconductors, such as cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) are cut to the required thickness (up to 5mm). The die surfaces are lapped and polished to a mirror-finish and then individually processed by electroless gold deposition combined with photolithography to form 74× 74 arrays of 200 μ m × 200 μ m pixels with 250 μ m pitch. Owing to a lack of availability of CZT wafers, lithography is commonly carried out on individual detector dies which represents a significant technical challenge as the edge of the pixel array and the surrounding guard band lies close to the physical edge of the crystal. Further, such detector dies are flip-chip bonded to readout ASIC using low-temperature curing silver-loaded epoxy so that the stress between the bonded detector die and the ASIC is minimized. In addition, this reduces crystalline modifications of the detector die that occur at temperature greater than 150\r{ }C and have adverse effects on the detector performance. To allow smaller pitch detectors to be bonded, STFC has also developed a compression cold-weld indium bump bonding technique utilising bumps formed by a photolithographic lift-off technique.

Edge effects in a small pixel CdTe for X-ray imaging

Large area detectors capable of operating with high detection efficiency at energies above 30 keV are required in many contemporary X-ray imaging applications. The properties of high Z compound semiconductors, such as CdTe, make them ideally suitable to these applications. The STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory has developed a small pixel CdTe detector with 80 80 pixels on a 250mm pitch. Historically, these detectors have included a 200mm wide guard band around the pixelated anode to reduce the effect of defects in the crystal edge. The latest version of the detector ASIC is capable of four-side butting that allows the tiling of N N flat panel arrays. To limit the dead space between modules to the width of one pixel, edgeless detector geometries have been developed where the active volume of the detector extends to the physical edge of the crystal. The spectroscopic performance of an edgeless CdTe detector bump bonded to the HEXITEC ASIC was tested with sealed radiation sources and compared with a monochromatic X-ray micro-beam mapping measurements made at the Diamond Light Source, U.K. The average energy resolution at 59.54 keV of bulk and edge pixels was 1.23 keV and 1.58 keV, respectively. 87% of the edge pixels present fully spectroscopic performance demonstrating that edgeless CdTe detectors are a promising technology for the production of large panel radiation detectors for X-ray imaging.

Evaluation of a new small-pixel CdTe spectroscopic detector in dual-tracer SPECT brain imaging

Simultaneous dual-tracer brain imaging has the potential to shorten patient pathways in the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases, but the poor spectral resolution of conventional gamma cameras limits the utility of this technique. Solid state detectors offer improved capability to distinguish between two radioisotopes, but the technology has yet to be fully evaluated in the field of scintigraphic neuroimaging. We present imaging results for a new small-pixel CdTe detector in simultaneous dual-radioisotope scintigraphy of a brain phantom containing Tc-99m and 1-123. Quantitative comparison is made with images of the same phantom obtained using a conventional gamma camera. We show that the CdTe detector offers improved scatter rejection and greatly reduced cross-talk between the energy windows. In addition, the new detector is able to resolve low-energy fluorescence x-rays from the source, which could be incorporated into SPECT reconstruction algorithms. Details of the planned development of the detector into a clinical demonstrator are discussed.

Performance comparison of small-pixel CdZnTe radiation detectors with gold contacts formed by sputter and electroless deposition

Recent improvements in the growth of wide-bandgap semiconductors, such as cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe or CZT), has enabled spectroscopic X/γ-ray imaging detectors to be developed. These detectors have applications covering homeland security, industrial analysis, space science and medical imaging. At the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) a promising range of spectroscopic, position sensitive, small-pixel Cd(Zn)Te detectors have been developed. The challenge now is to improve the quality of metal contacts on CdZnTe in order to meet the demanding energy and spatial resolution requirements of these applications. The choice of metal deposition method and fabrication process are of fundamental importance. Presented is a comparison of two CdZnTe detectors with contacts formed by sputter and electroless deposition. The detectors were fabricated with a 74 × 74 array of 200 μm pixels on a 250 μm pitch and bump-bonded to the HEXITEC ASIC. The X/γ-ray emissions from an 241Am source were measured to form energy spectra for comparison. It was found that the detector with contacts formed by electroless deposition produced the best uniformity and energy resolution; the best pixel produced a FWHM of 560 eV at 59.54 keV and 50% of pixels produced a FWHM better than 1.7 keV . This compared with a FWHM of 1.5 keV for the best pixel and 50% of pixels better than 4.4 keV for the detector with sputtered contacts.