A very large area (100 mm2) silicon drift detector for EXAFS applications

A 100 mm
²
silicon drift detector (SDD) has been developed in an effort to improve the solid angle of our Vortex
^®
SDD. The 100 mm
²
SDD features the same basic structure as our smaller area (50 mm
²
) devices and possesses the same advantages, including low noise, high count rates, and excellent energy resolution with thermoelectric cooling. The 100 mm
²
SDD is ideal for low or high count rate applications in which the x-rays of interest are occurring over a large solid angle, such as are encountered in TXRF (total reflection x-ray ray fluorescence), EXAFS (extended x-ray absorption fine structure) and other synchrotron applications. The new 100 mm
²
SDD has been evaluated in an EXAFS experiment at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory, which investigated the local atomic structure surrounding Mn in a LaMnO
₃
/SrMnO
₃
superlattice. Results show that the new large area SDD delivers excellent energy resolution, high peak-to-background and significantly reduces the data collection time for these types of sensitive EXAFS measurements.