The development of a fast imaging electron detector based on the CODACON concept

A fast imaging electron detector is being developed as part of the Toroidal Energy- and Angle-Resolved Electron Spectrometer (TEARES), a high-resolution electron spectrometer for use on synchrotron sources. The analysed solid angle of TEARES is about 100 times greater than that of a conventional hemispherical analyser of similar radius and entrance slit sizes. A 'typical' solid sample at a third-generation synchrotron source would yield count rates in excess of 1 GHz, > 10(3) times the capability of available imaging electron detectors. We describe a prototype detector based on low-resistance microchannel plates and an adaptation of the cartesian two-dimensional CODACON encoder that aims to achieve a relatively modest 2 MHz counting rate with 32 by 128 simultaneous energy and angle channels. The encoder pattern has been optimised for the output electron distribution of TEARES and directly generates a binary address for each event using simple electronics and the minimum number of signal channels. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.