The Effects of Different Anode Positions on the Electrical Properties of Square-Silicon Drift Detector

The Silicon Drift Detector (SDD) with square structure is often used in pixel-type SDD arrays to reduce the dead region considerably and to improve the detector performance significantly. Usually, the anode is located in the center of the active region of the SDD with square structure (square-SDD), but the different anode positions in the square-SDD active area are also allowed. In order to explore the effect on device performance when the anode is located at different positions in the square-SDD active region, we designed two different types of square-SDD in this work, where the anode is located either in the center (SDD-1) or at the edge (SDD-2) of its active region. The simulation results of current density and potential distribution show that SDD-1 and SDD-2 have both formed a good electron drift path to make the anode collect electrons. The experimental results of device performance at the temperature range from −60 °C to 60 °C show that the anode current of the two fabricated SDDs both decreased with the decrease of temperature, but their voltage divider characteristics exhibited high stability resistance value and low temperature coefficient, thereby indicating that they could both provide corresponding continuous and uniform electric field at different temperatures. Finally, SDD-1 and SDD-2 have energy resolutions of 248 and 257 eV corresponding to the 5.9 keV photon peak of the Fe-55 radioactive source, respectively. Our experimental results demonstrate that there is no significant impact on the device performance irrespective of the anode positions in the square-SDD devices.