Parallel and pipelined front-end for multi-element silicon detectors in scanning electron microscopy

Author

Boulin, C. ; Epstein, A.

Author_Institution

EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany

Volume

39

Issue

2

fYear

1992

fDate

4/1/1992 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

226

Lastpage

231

Abstract

A silicon quadrant detector (128 elements) was implemented as an electron detector in a scanning transmission electron microscope. As the electron beam scans over the sample, electrons are counted during each pixel. An ASIC was developed for the multichannel counting system. The digital front-end carries out the readout of all elements, in four groups, and uses these data to computer linear combinations to generate up to eight simultaneous images. For the preprocessing a parallel and pipelined system was implemented. Dedicated software tools were developed to generate the programs for all the processors. These tools are transparently accessed by the user via a user-friendly interface

Keywords

electron detection and measurement; parallel processing; physics computing; pipeline processing; scanning-transmission electron microscopy; semiconductor counters; software tools; ASIC; Si; digital front-end; electron detector; linear combinations; multi-element; multichannel counting system; parallel; pipelined front-end; pixel; preprocessing; quadrant detector; readout; scanning electron microscopy; scanning transmission electron microscope; simultaneous images; software tools; user-friendly interface; Application specific integrated circuits; Bonding; Ceramics; Detectors; Electron beams; Instruments; Optical microscopy; Scanning electron microscopy; Silicon; Transmission electron microscopy;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/23.277487

Filename

277487