Pulsed X-ray Characterization of Stripline Micro-Channel Plate Gated Imager
We report on characterization of x-ray imaging arrays developed by National Security Technologies, LLC. These devices are based on a microchannel plate (MCP) with a conventional glass microchannel structure, but the top and bottom conductive coatings, rather than covering the entire area, are configured into several (4 to 8) parallel strips. Since the bias voltage is a pulse launched from one end, these operate as striplines; relative delays between these pulses give different active exposure times. Unlike the case of a static bias voltage, non-uniformities in impedance along a stripline will produce spatial fluctuations in the bias voltage. These are expected to be slight, but the very sensitive dependence of gain on voltage - approximately like Vl/4d, where l and d are the length and diameter of the channel - means there may be very significant spatial non-uniformities in gain. Flat-field calibrations are therefore required so that such effects can be unfolded from the raw images if quantitative data is required. Such flat-field and other characterization measurements, e.g. responsivity and linearity, have therefore been done with a flash X-ray radiographic system. The maximum endpoint energy is 500 keV. The duration is {approx}40 ns, and so is essentially flat (temporally) during the MCP stripline transit time, which is a maximum of 600 ps. Spatial variations are significant, but the data are corrected using independent flat-field measurements. A monochromator selects a particular X-ray transition line (typically K{alpha}) of the anode material, so that characterizations can be done for various well-defined input photon energies.
- Research Organization:
- Nevada Test Site (NTS), Mercury, NV (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC52-06NA25946
- OSTI ID:
- 1046785
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/NV/25946-1182; TRN: US201215%%659
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Inertial Fusion Sciences and Applications, www.ifsa11.org, September 12-16, 2011, France
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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