Energy and position resolution of germanium microstrip detectors at x-ray energies from 15 to 100 keV

In addition to their far greater X-ray detection efficiency, germanium strip detectors offer superior energy and position resolution as compared to those fabricated of silicon for energies in the range of 15 to 100 keV. The authors have characterized 200-microm strip pitch detectors fabricated by two different processes. By scanning a 10-microm-wide monochromatic synchrotron X-ray beam across these detectors, measurements were made on both spectral energy response and spatial resolution. X rays absorbed between neighboring diode strips suffer from charge diffusion splitting of their signals which seriously degrades the detector performance, but by reconstructing events using an energy-sum coincidence algorithm the authors succeeded in producing artifact-free spectra with energy resolution <2 keV, peak/valley ratios > 1000, and count uniformities across the detector surface <1.5% for energies below 60 keV. The experimentally measured energy spectra show remarkable agreement with those predicted by computer simulation, in which the EGS4 code for photon absorption is combined with a simple algorithm to account for charge diffusion