An improved method of energy calibration for position-sensitive silicon detectors *

Energy calibration of resistive charge division-based position-sensitive silicon detectors is achieved by parabolic fitting in the traditional method, where the systematic variations of vertex and curvature of the parabola with energy must be considered. In this paper we extend the traditional method in order to correct the fitting function, simplify the procedure of calibration and improve the experimental data quality. Instead of a parabolic function as used in the traditional method, a new function describing the relation of position and energy is introduced. The energy resolution of the 8.088 MeV α decay of 213Rn is determined to be about 87 keV (FWHM), which is better than the result of the traditional method, 104 keV (FWHM). The improved method can be applied to the energy calibration of resistive charge division-based position-sensitive silicon detectors with various performances.