Gaia: segmented germanium detector for high-energy X-ray fluorescence and spectroscopic imaging

We present Gaia, a monolithic array of 96 high‐purity germanium pixel detectors integrated with a custom low‐noise application‐specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and a field‐programmable gate array (FPGA)‐based data acquisition system. The sensor operates at ∼100 K using a commercial closed‐cycle cryocooler, with the in‐vacuum electronics thermally isolated from the cold finger to ensure thermal stability. The system demonstrates an average energy resolution of 711 eV at 122 keV, measured using a 57Co source, and 253 eV at 5.89 keV, measured with 55Fe across all channels. The readout architecture incorporates a high‐performance FPGA paired with a dual‐core ARM processor, forming a complete embedded Linux‐based computing platform. Communication between the processor and FPGA is handled via memory‐mapped I/O, and data are streamed over high‐speed gigabit Ethernet. A full‐scale 384‐pixel Gaia detector, based on this 96‐element module, is currently under fabrication.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Journal of Synchrotron Radiation

• Publication date

  2026-01-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Physics, Engineering

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1107/S1600577525009294PMID 41217990PMCID 12809523
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Synchrotron-Based X-Ray Fluorescence Microscopy as a Technique for Imaging of Elements in Plants1[OPEN]

  2018cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.