CZT STRIP DETECTORS FOR IMAGING AND SPECTROSCOPY - COLLIMATED BEAM AND ASIC READOUT EXPERIMENTS

We report the status of ongoing investigations into Cadmium Zinc Tellu ride (CZT) strip detectors for application in hard x-ray astronomy. We have instrumented a nine strip by nine strip region of a two sided st rip detector made in our detector fabrication facility. In order to me asure the position resolution of our detectors, we have implemented a collimated beam that concentrates radiation to a spot size less than 5 0 mu m We have placed a 30 mu m upper limit on the width of the point spread function for this system. We have also performed charge collect ion studies as a function of incident photon energy and bias voltage w ith a single sided, 100 mu m pitch CZT strip detector wire bonded to a n SVX ASIC charge amplifier. The detectors exhibited excellent strip u niformity in terms of photon count rate and spectroscopic information.