ELECTRICAL AND FUNCTIONAL-CHARACTERIZATION OF A NOVEL SELF-BIASED LINEAR SILICON DRIFT DETECTOR

We describe here a novel design of self-biased linear Silicon Drift De tector (SDD) which minimizes the dead area and ensures a uniform therm al distribution on the sensitive zone of the detector itself. The prop er potential profile in the sensitive zone is established by the volta ge drop along a single cathode which acts at the same time as a voltag e divider and a field cathode. To verify the effectiveness of the nove l working prinicple, a 2 x 3.4 cm(2) preliminary prototype has been ma nufactured by Canberra Semiconductor. The static and dynamic character istics of the proposed device confirm that the spatial resolution (20 mu m) is not affected by the convergence of the cathode-strips if the voltage drop along them is linear.