A large area detector with indirect conversion, charge integration and photon counting operation

A new large-area pixel detector for X-ray diffraction combining indirect conversion with charge integration and photon counting is described. Indirect conversion achieves a large active area with no gaps or dead areas and also a high Detective Quantum Efficiency across the energy range of interest for X-ray diffraction, from 6 keV to 24 keV. The detector runs in charge integration mode which allows photon counting with no counts lost to charge sharing or coincident pulse effects. The detector is also able to discriminate against high energy events from the natural background radiation which allows the acquisition of very long exposures with essentially zero noise.