X-Ray Diffraction

Whatever your favorite X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) technique may be, here is some good news: you cannot underestimate its power! High standards have been set in all XRD techniques, and new venues are being opened at a very fast pace. 

The same goes for hybrid-pixel X-ray detectors. For more than a decade now, these detectors have combined the advantages of direct X-ray detection with photon-counting to provide high-quality data in terms of resolution, no-noise performance, high speed, and an extremely long life cycle. Continuous developments are still creating new features, and the resulting detector portfolio is so wide and versatile that all scientists, with some help and guidance, can find the ideal detector for their endeavors. 

Choose your technique and take a shortcut through our wide variety of hybrid-pixel detectors and their applications. You will also gain an understanding of detectors’ features and see how they are used by your peers to reach the optimum in your target technique: from low to high energies, from synchrotrons to laboratories, and from perfect single crystals to nanomaterial.

X-Ray Scattering

For fifteen years now, you have been using hybrid-pixel X-ray detectors to count X-rays that are scattered from various materials: protein solutions, nanomaterials, precipitates – you name it. Things have been great: the detectors’ noise-free performance, high sensitivity, vacuum compatibility, and reliability have contributed to data collection and correction protocols at synchrotrons and in laboratories. Overall, hybrid-pixel detectors have changed the way X-ray scattering experiments are done! 

But where do we go from here? Synchrotron beamlines are looking into scanning techniques such as SAXS-CT and ptychography, while laboratories are bringing SAXS, WAXS, and PDF closer to synchrotron standards. 

And what about hybrid-pixel detectors? Our portfolio is expanding; smaller pixels, a second energy threshold, continuous readout, and a higher frame rate are the features to keep an eye on.  

X-Ray Spectroscopy

The use of hybrid-pixel detectors in X-ray Spectroscopy techniques might sound exotic, but already the first generation of  MYTHEN and PILATUS detectors were tested for X-ray Fluorescence, EXAFS, and XANES at synchrotron sources. What advantages does this offer? Noise-free performance, large sensor areas, and an ability to discern very weak and very strong signals. These developments improved data and time resolution, and they also enabled even more unique techniques, such as XRF-CT. 

An equally significant push forward was also made in laboratory applications. The combination of the detectors’ technical specifications, compact size, and availability first opened a path to WD-XRF spectrometers and then continued to X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy. No, this is not a typo: the first hybrid-pixel detectors have been integrated into commercial EXAFS and XANES laboratory spectrometers! 

X-Ray Imaging

In order to see the internal structure of materials, objects, devices, and biological samples, a selection of techniques can be used. These include simple phase-contrast imaging, 3D tomography, and scanning techniques, based on scattering or diffraction signals; and coherent, diffraction-based imaging. Although these techniques feature different experimental setups and data-processing algorithms, many of them have the same basic requirements when it comes to an X-ray detector: a small pixel size, a sharp response, and high efficiency for low and high X-ray energies. 

Below, discover the PILATUS3 and EIGER2 detector families and their uses in diffraction and scattering tomography, XRF-CT, ptychography, grating-based X-ray interferometry, spectral imaging, and high-resolution micro- and nano-computed tomography.