The adaptive gain integrating pixel detector AGIPD a detector for the European XFEL

The European X-ray free electron laser is a new research facility currently under construction in Hamburg, Germany. Typical for XFEL machines is the high peak brilliance several orders of magnitudes above existing synchrotron facilities. With a pulse length below 100 fs and an extremely high luminosity of 30,000 flashes per second the European XFEL will have a worldwide unique time structure that enables researchers to record movies of ultrafast processes. This demands the development of new detectors tailored to the requirements imposed by the experiments while complying with the machine specific operation parameters. The adaptive gain integrating pixel detector (AGIPD) is one response to the need for large 2D detectors, able to cope with the 5 MHz repetition rate, as well as with the high dynamic range needed by XFEL experiments (from single photons to 10(4) 12 keV photons per pixel per pulse). In addition, doses up to 1 GGy over three years are expected. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.