Study of charge-sharing in MEDIPIX3 using a micro-focused synchrotron beam

X-ray photon-counting detectors consisting of a silicon pixel array sensor bump-bonded to a CMOS electronic readout chip offer several advantages over traditional X-ray detection technologies used for synchrotron applications. They offer high frame rate, dynamic range, count rate capability and signal-to-noise ratio. A survey of the requirements for future synchrotron detectors carried out at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron highlighted the needs for detectors with a pixel size of the order of 50μm. Reducing the pixel size leads to an increase of charge-sharing events between adjacent pixels and, therefore, to a degradation of the energy resolution and image quality of the detector. This effect was observed with MEDIPIX2, a photon-counting readout chip with a pixel size of 55μm. The lastest generation of the MEDIPIX family, MEDIPIX3, is designed to overcome this charge-sharing effect in an implemented readout operating mode referred to as Charge Summing Mode. MEDIPIX3 has the same pixel size as MEDIPIX2, but it is implemented in an 8-metal 0.13μm CMOS technology which enables increased functionality per pixel. The present work focuses on the study of the charge-sharing effect when the MEDIPIX3 is operated in Charge Summing Mode compared to the conventional readout mode, referred to as Single Pixel Mode. Tests of a standard silicon photodiode array bump-bonded to MEDIPIX3 were performed in beamline B16 at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron. A monochromatic micro-focused beam of 2.9μm x 2.2μm size at 15keV was used to scan a cluster of nine pixels in order to study the charge collection and X-ray count allocation process for each readout mode, Single Pixel Mode and Charge Summing Mode. The study showed that charge-shared events were eliminated when Medipix3 was operated in Charge Summing Mode.