EIGER: Extremly hIGh rate detEctoR

EIGER is a Single-Photon Counting (SPC) pixel detector being developed at the Paul Scherrer Institut for synchrotron applications. In SPCs, the counter of a pixel is increased by one if the signal generated by the interaction of a photon with the sensitive part of the detector exceeds a set threshold. The possibility of setting the threshold according to the experimental conditions allows for background rejection.
Its working principle is similar to the PILATUS detector, with 5 times more pixels per unit area and a frame rate up to 100 times faster.

The detector group at PSI is currently in the production stage of many Eiger systems for synchrotron applications.

The basic unit system is the EIGER module, consisting of 500 kpixels of 75x75 um2 size, with a sensitive area of 8x4 cm^2.
The module has on board intelligence provided by 6 FPGAs and memories. This means that frames can be stored and summed before transferring them out of the detector through 2 Ethernet connectors.
In addition, count rate corrections could be performed on board on the single frames before summation.

The modules are building blocks of larger systems, where acquisition, readout and data transfer are performed in fully parallel mode i.e. the frame rate of the system is not dependent on the detector size.
We have produced a 1.5 M system which is now installed at the https://www.psi.ch/sls/csaxs at the Swiss Light Source and will serve as wide angle scattering detector.
The largest system we are producing is a 9M system, which will be used as a small angle scattering detector at the same beamline.

• Pixel size 75x75 um^2
• Noise: depending on settings but 70-200 e- (250-700 eV)
• Sensitive to energies > 2.5 keV
• Pixel to pixel threshold inhomogenities: 70-150 eV
• Counter depth: configurable in 4/8/12 bit mode.
• Summing frames on board allows 32 bit depth counter
• Countinuos applications possible: 4 us dead time between frames.
• Frame rate: up to
  • 23 kHz in 4 bit, burst mode,
  • 7 kHz in 12 bit, burst mode
  • 2 kHz countinuos, 12 bit, 10 Gb Ethernet
  • 250 Hz continuos, 12 bit, 1 Gb Ethernet
• Count rate capabilities: 0.2-0.7 MHz/pixel @ 90% linearity

• Coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) and ptychography
• Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXs)
• Protein Crystallography (PX)
• Xray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy (XPCS)

Results showing the performance of Eiger in ptychography can be found https://www.psi.ch/coherent-x-ray-scattering/fast-scanning-coherent-x-r…

Documentation