An edge-on energy-resolved X-ray semiconductor detector. (June 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Yan, Tengfei; Yang, Chunlei; Cui, Xiaodong
• Is Part Of: Solid state communications. Volume 332(2021)
• Publication Date: 2021-06
• Subjects: X-ray dector -- Edge-on; Solid state chemistry -- Periodicals; Solid state physics -- Periodicals; Chimie de l'état solide -- Périodiques; Physique de l'état solide -- Périodiques; 530.41
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ssc.2021.114339
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0038-1098

Abstract

Abstract: The hyperspectral X-ray imaging has long been sought in various fields from material analysis to medical diagnosis. Here we propose a semiconductor detector structure to realize multi-energy imaging at potentially low cost. The device is designed based on the dramatically energy-dependent attenuation of X-ray in solids. An array or a two-/three-dimensional matrix of semiconductor cells is used to map the X-ray intensity along its trajectory. The X-ray spectrum could be extracted from a Laplace like transform or a regression via supervised machine learning. We conceptually demonstrated an energy-resolved X-ray detection with a regular silicon CMOS camera and a dummy sample of copper wires on top of an aluminum flake. The experiment provides energy-resolved X-ray image of the sample. The demonstration shows an energy resolution of less than 10 keV. We concluded that the proposed edge-on structure is potentially useful as energy-resolved high efficiency low-cost X-ray detectors. Highlights: Utilizing the depth information to resolve energy information of X-ray photons. Compared to traditional photon-counting method, the proposed detector is low-cost and efficient due to its layout. The demonstrating experiment shows promising result of the conceptual detector.