| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1822807 | Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment | 2013 | 8 Pages |
•A setup for soft proton irradiation of solid-state X-ray detectors is presented.•Designed to estimate degradation in the soft proton environment in low Earth orbits.•Fluence and spectrum are monitored independently from the irradiated detector.•High flux uniformity with deviations of less than 3% over an area of 8×8 cm2.•First applied for radiation hardness tests of detector prototypes for LOFT.
Protons that are trapped in the Earth's magnetic field are one of the main threats to astronomical X-ray observatories. Soft protons, in the range from tens of keV up to a few MeV, impinging on silicon X-ray detectors can lead to a significant degradation of the detector performance. Especially in low earth orbits an enhancement of the soft proton flux has been found. A setup to irradiate detectors with soft protons has been constructed at the Van-de-Graaff accelerator of the Physikalisches Institut of the University of Tübingen. Key advantages are a high flux uniformity over a large area, to enable irradiations of large detectors, and a monitoring system for the applied fluence, the beam uniformity, and the spectrum, that allows testing of detector prototypes in early development phases, when readout electronics are not yet available.Two irradiation campaigns have been performed so far with this setup. The irradiated detectors are silicon drift detectors, designated for the use on-board the LOFT space mission.This paper gives a description of the experimental setup and the associated monitoring system.
