$Thaumatin_diffraction$ PILATUS is the name of a series of x-ray detectors originally developed by the

Paul Scherrer Institute The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) is a multi-disciplinary research institute for natural and engineering sciences in Switzerland. It is located in the Canton of Aargau in the municipalities Villigen and Würenlingen on either side of the Ri ...

at the Swiss Light Source and further developed and commercialized by DECTRIS. The PILATUS detectors are based on hybrid photon counting (HPC) technology, by which X-rays are converted to electrical signals by the

photoelectric effect The photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons from a material caused by electromagnetic radiation such as ultraviolet light. Electrons emitted in this manner are called photoelectrons. The phenomenon is studied in condensed matter physi ...

in a

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

sensor layer—either

silicon Silicon is a chemical element; it has symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic lustre, and is a tetravalent metalloid (sometimes considered a non-metal) and semiconductor. It is a membe ...

or cadmium telluride—which is subject to a substantial bias voltage. The electric signals are counted directly by a series of cells in an ASIC bonded to the sensor. Each cell—or pixel—is a complete detector in itself, equipped with an amplifier, discriminator and counter circuit. This is possible thanks to contemporary

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss ", , ) is a type of MOSFET, metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) semiconductor device fabrication, fabrication process that uses complementary an ...

integrated circuit technology. The direct detection of single photons and the accurate determination of scattering and diffraction intensities over a wide dynamic range have resulted in PILATUS detectors becoming a standard at most synchrotron beamlines and being used for a large variety of X-ray applications, including: small-angle scattering, coherent scattering, X-ray powder diffraction and

spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets electromagnetic spectra. In narrower contexts, spectroscopy is the precise study of color as generalized from visible light to all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Spectro ...

History

The first large-area PILATUS detector was developed at PSI in 2003 as a project stemming from the development of pixel detectors for the CMS experiment at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

. It became the first HPC detector to be widely used at synchrotron beamlines around the world. The second generation PILATUS2 systems represented a major technological improvement, featuring a pixel size of 172×172μm, a counter depth of 20 bits and a radiation-tolerant design, necessary for operation with the intense X-ray beams at synchrotrons. In 2006, PILATUS2 was commercialized by DECTRIS. The field of

protein crystallography X-ray crystallography is the experimental science of determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to diffract in specific directions. By measuring the angles and ...

rapidly benefited from the short readout time and noise free signal acquisition of the detector, since it substantially reduced the time required to collect data. The third generation PILATUS3, introduced in 2012, features instant-retrigger technology, which allows for even higher photon counting rates than its predecessors.

References

*{{Cite book, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1Wu6CgAAQBAJ&q=Pilatus+%28detector%29+silicon+-wikipedia&pg=PA240, title=Silicon Solid State Devices and Radiation Detection, author=Claude Leroy, date=2012, publisher=World Scientific, page=240, accessdate=11 December 2018, isbn=9789814390057 Detectors X-ray instrumentation X-ray equipment manufacturers Ionising radiation detectors X-ray crystallography