Development of thick intrinsic silicon detectors for hard X-ray and gamma-ray detection

We are developing thick intrinsic silicon detectors for hard X-ray and gamma-ray detection. The goal is to manufacture detectors with good spectroscopy and imaging capabilities without the need for cryogenics. Our current baseline design is a double-sided silicon strip detector with an active area of /spl sim/60 mm /spl times/60 mm and a thickness of 2 mm. To demonstrate the feasibility of 2 mm thick intrinsic detectors, we tested a 2 mm thick single pixel detector. An energy resolution of 1 keV FWHM at 60 keV was achieved at an operating temperature of -65C. The detector was fully depleted at /spl sim/800 V. We present the detailed results of tests on the pixel detector, the design of our double sided detector, and the conceptual design of hard X-ray and gamma ray instruments that use these detectors.