Design and performance evaluation of SDD based X-ray spectrometer for future planetary exploration

Silicon Drift Detector (SDD) based X-ray spectrometer has been developed for obtaining the elemental composition of unknown samples by detecting fluorescent X-rays in the energy region 1-25 key by a non-destructive process. The use of new technology X-ray detector provides good energy resolution for detecting the elements separated with similar to 150 eV apart. Here we present the design of a complete Xray spectrometer intended for use in the future space-born experiment. The low energy threshold of <1 key and the energy resolution of similar to 150 eV at 5.9 keV, as measured from the system is comparable to the standard spectrometers available off-the-shelf. We evaluated the system performance for different signal peaking time, as well as for different input count rates and show that the performance remains stable for incident count rate up to 20,000 counts per second. We have also carried out a 'proof of concept' experiment of measuring fluorescent X-ray spectrum from various standard XRF samples from the USGS catalog irradiated by the laboratory X-ray source Am-241 with 1 mCi activity. It is shown that intensities of various characteristic X-ray lines are well correlated with the respective elemental concentrations. A specific effort has been made while designing the developed X-ray spectrometer to use electronic components which are available in space grade so that the same electronic design can be used in the upcoming planetary missions with appropriate mechanical packaging. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.