Synchrotron applications of an amorphous silicon flat-panel detector

A GE Revolution 41RT flat-panel detector (GE 41RT) from GE Healthcare (GE) has been in operation at the Advanced Photon Source for over two years. The detector has an active area of 41. cm x 41 cm with 200 mu m x 200 mu m pixel size. The nominal working photon energy is around 80 keV The physical set-up and utility software of the detector system are discussed in this article. The linearity of the detector response was measured at 80.7 keV The memory effect of the detector element, called lag, was also measured at different exposure times and gain settings. The modulation transfer function was measured in terms of the line-spread function using a 25 mu m x 1 cm tungsten slit. The background (dark) signal, the signal that the detector will carry without exposure to X-rays, was measured at three different gain settings and with exposure times of 1 ms to 15 s. The radial geometric flatness of the sensor panel was measured using the diffraction pattern from a CeO2 powder standard. The large active area and fast data-capturing rate, i.e. 8 frames s(-1) in radiography mode, 30 frames s(-1) in fluoroscopy mode, make the GE 41RT one of a kind and very versatile in synchrotron diffraction. The loading behavior of a Cu/Nb multilayer material is used to demonstrate the use of the detector in a strain-stress experiment. Data from the measurement of various samples, amorphous SiO2 in particular, are presented to show the detector effectiveness in pair distribution function measurements.