Energy and position resolution of germanium microstrip detectors at X-ray energies from 15 to 100 keV

In addition to their far greater X-ray detection efficiency, germanium stri p detectors offer superior energy and position resolution as compared to th ose fabricated of silicon for energies in the range of 15 to 100 keV, We ha ve characterized 200-mu m strip pitch detectors fabricated by two different processes. By scanning a ltd-pm-wide monochromatic synchrotron X-ray beam across these detectors, measurements were made on both spectral energy resp onse and spatial resolution. X-rays absorbed between neighboring diode stri ps suffer from charge diffusion splitting of their signals which seriously degrades the detector performance, but by reconstructing events using an en ergy-sum coincidence algorithm we succeeded in producing artifact-free spec tra with energy resolution <2 keV, peak/valley ratios > 1000, and count uni formities across the detector surface < 1.5% for energies below 60 keV, The experimentally measured energy spectra show remarkable agreement with thos e predicted by computer simulation, in which the EGS4 code for photon absor ption is combined with a simple algorithm to account for charge diffusion.