Development and Characterization of the Timepix X-ray Sensor Assembly (TXSA) (TXSA)

Hard X-rays (HXRs) from bremsstrahlung are the most direct available diagnostic of solar flare electron acceleration. This acceleration is thought to occur as a transfer of energy from the magnetic fields of the solar corona into energetic particles, though the exact nature of the acceleration is not understood. To investigate flare particle acceleration, innovative new instruments will fly on CubeSats and other platforms to observe the Sun. These instruments will require detectors sensitive to X-rays up to ~100 keV with an energy resolution of a few keV or better, and with low background rates. Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) is an attractive material for these purposes because it can typically be operated at temperatures requiring only passive cooling. This is particularly attractive for CubeSats that don’t have room for mechanical coolers or consumables. A specific future mission for which this development is intended is the Miniature X-ray Imager (MiXI). The MiXI concept is a HXR imager aboard a CubeSat that will observe flares and active regions in Solar Cycle 25. MiXI will produce images and spectra of flares and will be optimized for co-observation with the STIX instrument on Solar Orbiter, in order to observe HXR flares from multiple vantage points. The TXSA development will supply the needed detector for MiXI and will also be useful for other solar HXR instruments. This proposal describe the development and testing of the HXR Imager detector assembly based on the Medipix/Timepix detectors. The Medipix is a family of photon counting and particle tracking detectors developed by the Medipix collaboration and designed by the Microelectronics Group at CERN. Each of these detectors have 256×256 pixels with a pixel size of 55μm square with a total area of 14.08mm × 14.08mm. We will bump-bond 4 CdTe diode arrays to 4 readouts forming an array of 2x2. In addition to designing and fabricating the array, we will test and characterize these detectors in the range of 3—100 keV for applications in space and solar astrophysics.

Support NASA's Heliophysics strategic science objectives to understand the Sun and its interactions with Earth and the solar system, including space weather. This will be achieved by developing/demonstrating instrumentation technology necessary to address the following science goals: Explore the physical processes in the space environment from the Sun to the Earth and throughout the solar system; Advance our understanding of the connections that link the Sun, the Earth, planetary space environments, and the outer reaches of our solar system; Develop the knowledge and capability to detect and predict extreme conditions in space to protect life and society and to safeguard human and robotic explorers beyond Earth.

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