P. Göttlicher

Architecture and design of the AGIPD detector for the European XFEL

AGIPD is a hybrid pixel detector developed by DESY, PSI, the University of Bonn and the University of Hamburg. The detector is targeted for use at the European XFEL, a source with unique properties: a bunch train of 2700 pulses with> 1012 photons of 12 keV each, only 100 fs long and with a 220 ns spacing, is repeated at a 10 Hz rate. This puts up very demanding requirements: dynamic range has to cover the detection of single photons and extend up to > 104 photons/pixel in the same image, and as many images, as possible have to be recorded in the pixel to be read out between pulse trains. The high photon flux impinging on the detector also calls for a very radiation hard design of sensor and ASIC. The detector will consist of 16 Sensor modules arranged around a central hole for the direct beam. Each made of a single sensor bumpbonded to 2 × 8 readout chips of 64 × 64 pixels in a grid of 200μ pitch. Each pixel of these ASICs contains a charge sensitive preamplifier featuring adaptive gain switching, changing sensitivity in three ranges, and a buffer to provide correlated double sampling (in the highest sensitivity mode). Most of the pixel area, albeit, is used for an analogue memory to record 352 frames. It is operated in random-access mode: data containing bad frames can be overwritten and the memory can be used in the most efficient way. The readout between two bunch trains is arranged via 4 ports: Data from pixels of one row is read in parallel and serialised by 4 multiplexers at the end of the pixel columns and driven off-chip as differential signals. The operation of the ASIC is controlled via a three-line serial interface, using a command based protocol. It is also used to configure the chips operational parameters and internal timings.

The high speed, high dynamic range camera AGIPD

The European X-Ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) will provide ultra short, highly coherent X-ray pulses which will revolutionize scientific experiments in a variety of disciplines spanning physics, chemistry, materials science, and biology. One of the differences between the European XFEL and other free electron laser sources is the high pulse frequency of 4.5 MHz. The European XFEL will provide pulse trains, consisting of up to 2700 pulses separated by 220 ns (600 μs in total) followed by an idle time of 99.4 ms, resulting in a supercycle of 10 Hz. Dedicated fast 2D detectors are being developed, one of which is the Adaptive Gain Integrating Pixel Detector (AGIPD). AGIPD is based on the hybrid pixel technology. The design goals of the recently produced, radiation hard Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) with dynamic gain switching amplifiers are (for each pixel) a dynamic range of more than 104 12.4 keV photons in the lowest gain, single photon sensitivity in the highest gain, an analog memory capable of storing 352 images, and operation at 4.5 MHz frame rate. A vetoing scheme allows to maximize the number of useful images that are acquired by providing the possibility to overwrite any previously recorded image during the pulse train. The AGIPD will feature a pixel size of (200 μm)2 and a silicon sensor with a thickness of 500 μm. The image data is read out and digitized between pulse trains.

High speed cameras for X-rays: AGIPD and others

Experiments at high pulse rate Free Electron Laser (FEL) facilities require new cameras capable of acquiring 2D images at high rates, handling large signal dynamic ranges and resolving images from individual pulses. The Adaptive Gain Integrated Pixel Detector (AGIPD) will operated with pulse rates and separations of 27000/s and 220 ns, respectively at European XFEL. Si-sensors, ASICs, PCBs, and FPGA logic are developed for a 1 Mega-pixel camera with 200 μm square pixels with per-pulse occupancies ≤ 104. Data from 3520 images/s will be transferred with 80 Gbits/s to a DAQ-system. The electronics have been adapted for use in other synchrotron light source detectors.

Detector Developments at DESY

With the increased brilliance of state-of-the-art synchrotron radiation sources and the advent of free-electron lasers (FELs) enabling revolutionary science with EUV to X-ray photons comes an urgent need for suitable photon imaging detectors. Requirements include high frame rates, very large dynamic range, single-photon sensitivity with low probability of false positives and (multi)-megapixels. At DESY, one ongoing development project - in collaboration with RAL/STFC, Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, Diamond, and Pohang Accelerator Laboratory - is the CMOS-based soft X-ray imager PERCIVAL. PERCIVAL is a monolithic active-pixel sensor back-thinned to access its primary energy range of 250 eV to 1 keV with target efficiencies above 90%. According to preliminary specifications, the roughly 10 cm × 10 cm, 3.5k × 3.7k monolithic sensor will operate at frame rates up to 120 Hz (commensurate with most FELs) and use multiple gains within 27 µm pixels to measure 1 to ∼100000 (500 eV) simultaneously arriving photons. DESY is also leading the development of the AGIPD, a high-speed detector based on hybrid pixel technology intended for use at the European XFEL. This system is being developed in collaboration with PSI, University of Hamburg, and University of Bonn. The AGIPD allows single-pulse imaging at 4.5 MHz frame rate into a 352-frame buffer, with a dynamic range allowing single-photon detection and detection of more than 10000 photons at 12.4 keV in the same image. Modules of 65k pixels each are configured to make up (multi)megapixel cameras. This review describes the AGIPD and the PERCIVAL concepts and systems, including some recent results and a summary of their current status. It also gives a short overview over other FEL-relevant developments where the Photon Science Detector Group at DESY is involved.

PERCIVAL: The design and characterisation of a CMOS image sensor for direct detection of low-energy X-rays

Free-Electron Lasers and Synchrotrons are rapidly increasing in brilliance. This has led a requirement of large dynamic range and high frame rate sensors that is now being fulfilled by the PERCVIAL CMOS imager for direct X-ray detection developed at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Utilising a lateral overflow pixel and back-side illumination, PERCIVAL simultaneously achieves low-noise single-photon detection and high full well up to 107 e-, all while maintaining a frame rate of 120Hz. PERCIVAL is currently in test structure stage, and will be produced in 2 Mpixel and 13 Mpixel “waferscale” variants in 2015.

On the Charge Collection Efficiency of the PERCIVAL Detector

The PERCIVAL soft X-ray imager is being developed by DESY, RAL, Elettra, DLS, and PAL to address the challenges at high brilliance Light Sources such as new-generation Synchrotrons and Free Electro ...

Report on recent results of the PERCIVAL soft X-ray imager

The PERCIVAL (Pixelated Energy Resolving CMOS Imager, Versatile And Large) soft X-ray 2D imaging detector is based on stitched, wafer-scale sensors possessing a thick epi-layer, which together with back-thinning and back-side illumination yields elevated quantum efficiency in the photon energy range of 125–1000 eV. Main application fields of PERCIVAL are foreseen in photon science with FELs and synchrotron radiation. This requires high dynamic range up to 105 ph @ 250 eV paired with single photon sensitivity with high confidence at moderate frame rates in the range of 10–120 Hz. These figures imply the availability of dynamic gain switching on a pixel-by-pixel basis and a highly parallel, low noise analog and digital readout, which has been realized in the PERCIVAL sensor layout. Different aspects of the detector performance have been assessed using prototype sensors with different pixel and ADC types. This work will report on the recent test results performed on the newest chip prototypes with the improved pixel and ADC architecture. For the target frame rates in the 10–120 Hz range an average noise floor of 14e− has been determined, indicating the ability of detecting single photons with energies above 250 eV. Owing to the successfully implemented adaptive 3-stage multiple-gain switching, the integrated charge level exceeds 4 10^6 e− or 57000 X-ray photons at 250 eV per frame at 120 Hz. For all gains the noise level remains below the Poisson limit also in high-flux conditions. Additionally, a short overview over the updates on an oncoming 2 Mpixel (P2M) detector system (expected at the end of 2016) will be reported.

AGIPD: a multi megapixel, multi megahertz X-ray camera for the European XFEL

AGIPD is a hybrid pixel detector developed by DESY, PSI, and the Universities of Bonn and Hamburg. It is targeted for use at the European XFEL, a source with unique properties: a train of up to 2700 pulses is repeated at 10 Hz rate. The pulses inside a train are ≤100fs long and separated by 220 ns, containing up to 1012 photons of 12.4 keV each. The readout ASICs with 64 x 64 pixels each have to cope with these properties: Single photon sensitivity and a dynamic range up to ⪆104 photons/pixel in the same image as well as storage for as many as possible images of a pulse train for delayed readout, prior to the next train. The high impinging photon flux also requires a very radiation hard design of sensor and ASIC, which uses 130 nm CMOS technology and radiation tolerant techniques. The signal path inside a pixel of the ASIC consists of a charge sensitive preamplifier with 3 individual gains, adaptively selected by a subsequent discriminator. The preamp also feeds to a correlated double sampling stage, which writes to an analogue memory to record 352 frames. It is random-access, so it can be used most efficiently by overwriting bad or empty images. Encoded gain information is stored to a similar memory. Readout of these memories is via a common charge sensitive amplifier in each pixel, and multiplexers on four differential ports. Operation of the ASIC is controlled via a command interface, using 3 LVDS lines. It also serves to configure the chip’s operational parameters and timings.

The AGIPD 1.0 ASIC: Random access high frame rate, high dynamic range X-ray camera readout for the European XFEL

The European XFEL is an extremely brilliant Free Electron Laser Source with a very demanding pulse structure: trains of 2700 X-Ray pulses are repeated at 10 Hz. The pulses inside the train are spaced by 220 ns and each one contains up to 1012 photons of 12.4 keV, while being ≤ 100 fs in length. AGIPD (Adaptive Gain Integrating Pixel Detector) is a hybrid 1M-pixel detector developed by DESY, PSI, and the Universities of Bonn and Hamburg to cope with these properties. Thus the readout ASIC has to provide not only single photon sensitivity and a dynamic range ≳ 104 photons/pixel in the same image but also a memory for as many images of a pulse train as possible for delayed readout prior to the next train. The AGIPD 1.0 ASIC uses a 130 nm CMOS technology and radiation tolerant techniques to withstand the radiation damage incurred by the high impinging photon flux. Each ASIC contains 64 × 64 pixels of 200μmχ200μm. The circuit of each pixel contains a charge sensitive preamplifier with threefold switchable gain, a discriminator for an adaptive gain selection, and a correlated double sampling (CDS) stage to remove reset and low-frequency noise components. The output of the CDS, as well as the dynamically selected gain is sampled in a capacitor-based analogue memory for 352 samples, which occupies about 80% of a pixels area. For readout each pixel features a charge sensitive buffer. A control circuit with a command based interface provides random access to the memory and controls the row-wise readout of the data via multiplexers to four differential analogue ports. The AGIPD 1.0 full scale ASIC has been received back from the foundry in fall of 2013. Since then it has been extensively characterised also with a sensor as a single chip and in 2 × 8-chip modules for the AGIPD 1 Mpix detector. We present the design of the AGIPD 1.0 ASIC along with supporting results, also from beam tests at PETRA III and APS, and show changes incorporated in the recently taped out AGIPD 1.1 ASIC upgrade.

AGIPD 1.0: The high-speed high dynamic range readout ASIC for the adaptive gain integrating pixel detector at the European XFEL

AGIPD is a hybrid pixel X-ray detector developed by a collaboration between Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Paul-Scherrer-Institute (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 104 × 12.4 keV photons, achieved by the use of dynamic gain switching, auto-selecting one of 3 gains of the charge sensitive pre-amplifier. To cope with the unique features of the European XFEL source, image data is stored in 352 analogue memory cells per pixel. The selected gain is stored in the same way and depth, encoded as one of 3 voltage levels. These memories are operated in random-access mode at 4.5MHz frame rate. Data is read out on a row-by-row basis via multiplexers to the DAQ system for digitisation during the 99.4ms gap between the bunch trains of the European XFEL. The AGIPD 1.0 ASIC features 64×64 pixels with a pixel area of 200×200 µm2. It is bump-bonded to a 500 µm thick silicon sensor. The principles of the chip architecture were proven in different experiments and the ASIC characterization was performed with a series of development prototypes. The mechanical concept of the detector system was developed in close contact with the XFEL beamline scientists to ensure a seamless integration into the beamline setup and is currently being manufactured. The first single module system was successfully tested at APS1 the high dynamic range allows imaging of the direct synchrotron beam along with single photon sensitivity and burst imaging of 352 subsequent frames synchronized to the source.