Parallel and pipelined front-end for multi-element silicon detectors in scanning electron microscopy

A silicon quadrant detector (128 elements) was implemented as an electron detector in a scanning transmission electron microscope. As the electron beam scans over the sample, electrons are counted during each pixel. An ASIC was developed for the multichannel counting system. The digital front-end carries out the readout of all elements, in four groups, and uses these data to computer linear combinations to generate up to eight simultaneous images. For the preprocessing a parallel and pipelined system was implemented. Dedicated software tools were developed to generate the programs for all the processors. These tools are transparently accessed by the user via a user-friendly interface.<
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