Simulated and experimental spectroscopic performance of GaAs X-ray pixel detectors

In pixel detectors, the electrode geometry affects the signal shape and therefore the spectroscopic performance of the device. This effect is enhanced in semiconductors where carrier trapping is relevant. In particular, semi insulating (SI) GaAs crystals present an incomplete charge collection due to a high concentration of deep traps in the bulk. In the last few years, SI GaAs pixel detectors have been developed as soft X-ray detectors for medical imaging applications. In this paper, we present a numerical method to evaluate the local charge collection properties of pixel detectors. A bi-dimensional description has been used to represent the detector geometry, According to recent models, the active region of a reverse biased SI GaAs detector is almost neutral. Therefore, the electrostatic potential inside a full active detector has been evaluated using the Laplace equation. A finite difference method with a fixed step orthogonal mesh has been adopted. The photon interaction point has been generated with a Monte Carlo method according to the attenuation length of a monochromatic X-ray beam in GaAs. The number of photogenerated carriers for each interaction has been extracted using a gaussian distribution. The induced signal on the collecting electrode has been calculated according to the Ramo's theorem and the trapping effect has been modeled introducing electron and hole lifetimes. The noise of the charge preamplifier have been also taken into account. A comparison between simulated and experimental X-ray spectra from a Am-241 source acquired with different GaAs pixel detectors has been carried out. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.