PixFEL: development of an X-ray diffraction imager for future FEL applications

A readout chip for diffraction imaging applications at new generation X-ray FELs (Free Electron Lasers) has been designed in a 65~nm CMOS technology. It consists of a $ 32 \times 32 $ matrix, with square pixels and a pixel pitch of $ 110\ \mu m $. Each cell includes a low-noise charge sensitive amplifier (CSA) with dynamic signal compression, covering an input dynamic range from 1 to $ 10^4 $ photons and featuring single photon resolution at small signals at energies from 1 to 10 keV. The CSA output is processed by a time-variant shaper performing gated integration and correlated double sampling. Each pixel includes also a small area, low power 10-bit time-interleaved Successive Approximation Register (SAR) ADC for in-pixel digitization of the amplitude measurement. The channel can be operated at rates up to 4.5~MHz, to be compliant with the rates foreseen for future X-ray FEL machines. The ASIC has been designed in order to be bump bonded to a slim/active edge pixel sensor, in order to build the first demonstrator for the PixFEL (advanced X-ray PIXel cameras at FELs) imager.