High Purity Germanium (HPGe) Detector Development for High-Rate Spectroscopy and Imaging

While High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detectors are widely acknowledged as the gold standard for high-resolution gamma-ray spectroscopy, conventional coaxial HPGe detectors exhibit noticeable performance degradation at elevated counting rates (tens of thousands of counts per second (cps)). In response to this limitation, a novel HPGe detector prototype has been developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) with the objective of maintaining energy resolution and throughput performance at ultra-high rates (5 Mcps) and providing 3D position sensitivity.

The detector geometry consists of a double-sided strip detector with a fine strip pitch. The design resulted from a comprehensive analysis, involving both analytic and numerical calculations to assess expected efficiency, throughput, timing, energy, and position resolution across various geometries and electrode configurations. Details of the design will be presented, as well as characterization measurements of the initial prototype device.