Tristan—A 10 Million Pixel Large Area Time Resolved Detector for Synchrotron Use

This article describes the development of the Tristan 10 M detector for time-resolved synchrotron experiments. Tristan 10 M has an unprecedented time resolution (ns time scale) over long-duration continuous acquisition (days). The detector is constructed from an array of 160 Timepix3 readout application-specified integrated circuit (ASIC; about 10 million pixels) flip chip bonded to ten monolithic silicon sensors, which enable it to cover an area large enough to effectively carry out crystallography experiments. The large array of ASICs resulted in a number of severe technical challenges that had to be overcome during the development of the detector. The minimization of the dead area between sensors required the development of a very challenging mechanical and electronic packaging. Such a packaging had to be able to route the large number of data and power lines within the footprint of a sensor, had to effectively sink the heat generated by the ASICs, and had to be able to position the sensors accurately. In addition, the packaging of the detector was designed to be scalable in consideration of possible future larger versions of this detector, which added a further challenge. The data-driven nature of Timepix3 and the sheer data volume produced by the array of ASICs required us to devise a dedicated hardware, firmware, and software data acquisition architecture. This architecture proved very effective during the commissioning of Tristan 10 M when time-resolved crystallography experiments were carried out.