PixDD: a multi-pixel silicon drift detector for high-throughput spectral-timing studies

The Pixelated silicon Drift Detector (PixDD) is a two-dimensional multi-pixel X-ray sensor based on the technology of Silicon Drift Detectors, designed to solve the dead time and pile-up issues of photon-integrating imaging detectors. Read out by a two-dimensional self-triggering Application-Specific Integrated Circuit named RIGEL, to which the sensor is bump-bonded, it operates in the 0.5 - 15 keV energy range and is designed to achieve single-photon sensitivity and good spectroscopic capabilities even at room temperature or with mild cooling (< 150 eV resolution at 6 keV at 0 degrees C). The paper reports on the design and performance tests of the 128-pixel prototype of the fully integrated system.