A liquid-helium cooled large-area silicon PIN photodiode X-ray detector

An X-ray detector using a liquid-helium cooled large-area silicon PIN photodiode has been developed along with a tailor-made charge sensitive preamplifier whose first-stage JFET has been cooled. The operating temperature of the JFET has been varied separately and optimized. The X- and γ-ray energy spectra for an 241Am source have been measured with the photodiode operated at 13 K. An energy resolution of 1.60 keV (FWHM) has been obtained for 60-keV γ rays and 1.30 keV (FWHM) for the pulser. The energy threshold could be set as low as 3 keV. It has been shown that a silicon PIN photodiode serves as a low-cost excellent X-ray detector which covers a large area at 13 K.