MONCH, a small pitch, integrating hybrid pixel detector for X-ray applications

PSI is developing several new detector families based on charge integration and analog readout (CI) to respond to the needs of X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs), where a signal up to similar to 10(4) photons impinging simultaneously on a pixel make single photon counting detectors unusable. MONCH is a novel hybrid silicon pixel detector where CI is combined with a challengingly small pixel size of 25x25 mu m(2). CI enables the detector to process several incoming photon simultaneously in XFEL applications. Moreover, due to the small pixel size, the charge produced by an impinging photon is often shared. In low flux experiments the analog information provided by single photons can be used either to obtain spectral information or to improve the position resolution by interpolation. Possible applications are resonant and non-resonant inelastic X-ray scattering or X-ray tomography with X-ray tubes. Two prototype ASICs were designed in UMC 110 nm technology. MONCH01 contains only some test cells used to assess technology performance and make basic design choices. MONCH02 is a fully functional, small scale prototype of 4x4 mm(2), containing an array of 160x160 pixels. This array is subdivided in five blocks, each featuring a different pixel architecture. Two blocks have statically selectable preamplifier gains and target synchrotron applications. In low gain mode they should provide single photon sensitivity (at 6-12 keV) as well as a reasonable dynamic range for such a small area (> 120 photons). In high gain they target high resolution, low flux experiments where charge sharing can be exploited to reach mu m resolution. Three other architectures address possible uses at XFELs and implement automatic switching between two gains to increase the dynamic range, as well as input overvoltage control. The paper presents the MONCH project and first results obtained with the MONCH02 prototype.