In recent years various instruments on board satellite missions have demonstrated the need to extend high sensitivity measurements with fine angular resolution coupled to good spectroscopic performance into the hard X-ray regime. These requirements have stimulated the development of hard X-ray focusing optics such as multilayer concentrators.

The effort in hard X-ray optics development has led to the design of new focal plane detectors capable of meeting the requirements posed by this kind of optics, in particular in terms of high-energy detection efficiency, spectroscopic capabilities and position resolution.

Among other high-Z semiconductor materials, Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CZT) pixel detectors show very good spectral (< 5% @ 60 keV) and spatial resolution (down to tens of 痠) and are suitable for use in compact hard X-ray sensors operated at room temperature in the (10 - 100) keV energy band.

IASF-Palermo is involved in the development of a CdTe-CZT focal plane prototype to be used in a balloon borne mission and, in particular, has the responsibility of the pixellated detector.

Contact person at IASF-Palermo:

Stefano.DelSordo at iasf-palermo.inaf.it

Last Modification: Monday, November 30 2009

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