MPI/AIT X-ray Imager (MAXI): High speed pn-CCD's for x-ray detection.

摘要

MAXI (MPI/AIT X-RAY Imager) is part of a proposal submitted to the European Space Agency (ESA) as focal plane instrumentation of the X-ray Multi Mission (XMM). Within a collaboration of 13 European institutes we have proposed a fully depleted (sensitive) pn CCD of 280 (mu)m thickness with a homogeneous sensitive area of 36 cm(sup 2) and a pixel size of 150 (times) 150 (mu)m(sup 2) which is well matched with the telescope's angular resolution of 30 arcsec, translating to a position resolution of approximately 1 mm in the focal plane. The X-ray sensitivity is higher than 90% from 250 eV up to 10 keV, the readout time in the full frame mode of the complete focal plane will be 2 ms with a readout noise of better than 5 e(sup (minus)) (rms). Prototypes of all individual components of the camera system have been fabricated and tested. The camera concept will be presented. The measured transfer properties of the CCD and the on-chip electronics will be treated. Taking into account the coupling of the on-chip amplifier to the following front-end electronics the expected performance will be derived.