Journal of Synchrotron Radiation (Jan 2022)

Single-shot experiments at the soft X-FEL FERMI using a back-side-illuminated scientific CMOS detector

  • Cyril Léveillé,
  • Kewin Desjardins,
  • Horia Popescu,
  • Boris Vondungbo,
  • Marcel Hennes,
  • Renaud Delaunay,
  • Emmanuelle Jal,
  • Dario De Angelis,
  • Matteo Pancaldi,
  • Emanuele Pedersoli,
  • Flavio Capotondi,
  • Nicolas Jaouen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1107/S1600577521012303
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 29, no. 1
pp. 103 – 110

Abstract

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The latest Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) 2D sensors now rival the performance of state-of-the-art photon detectors for optical application, combining a high-frame-rate speed with a wide dynamic range. While the advent of high-repetition-rate hard X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) has boosted the development of complex large-area fast CCD detectors in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft X-ray domains, scientists lacked such high-performance 2D detectors, principally due to the very poor efficiency limited by the sensor processing. Recently, a new generation of large back-side-illuminated scientific CMOS sensors (CMOS-BSI) has been developed and commercialized. One of these cost-efficient and competitive sensors, the GSENSE400BSI, has been implemented and characterized, and the proof of concept has been carried out at a synchrotron or laser-based X-ray source. In this article, we explore the feasibility of single-shot ultra-fast experiments at FEL sources operating in the EUV/soft X-ray regime with an AXIS-SXR camera equipped with the GSENSE400BSI-TVISB sensor. We illustrate the detector capabilities by performing a soft X-ray magnetic scattering experiment at the DiProi end-station of the FERMI FEL. These measurements show the possibility of integrating this camera for collecting single-shot images at the 50 Hz operation mode of FERMI with a cropped image size of 700 × 700 pixels. The efficiency of the sensor at a working photon energy of 58 eV and the linearity over the large FEL intensity have been verified. Moreover, on-the-fly time-resolved single-shot X-ray resonant magnetic scattering imaging from prototype Co/Pt multilayer films has been carried out with a time collection gain of 30 compared to the classical start-and-stop acquisition method performed with the conventional CCD-BSI detector available at the end-station.

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