A fast, direct x-ray detection charge-coupled device

A charge-coupled device (CCD) capable of 200 Mpixels/s readout has been designed and fabricated on thick, high-resistivity silicon. The CCDs, up to 600 mu m thick, are fully depleted, ensuring good infrared to x-ray detection efficiency, together with a small point spread function. High readout speed, with good analog performance, is obtained by the use of a large number of parallel output ports. A set of companion 16-channel custom readout integrated circuits, capable of 15 bits of dynamic range, is used to read out the CCD. A gate array-controlled back end data acquisition system frames and transfers images, as well as provides the CCD clocks. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [DOI: 10.1063/1.3187222]