HCF (HREXI Calibration Facility): Mapping out sub-pixel level responses from high resolution Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CZT) imaging X-ray detectors

Abstract: The High Resolution Energetic X-Ray Imager (HREXI) CZT detector development program at Harvard is aimed at developing tiled arrays of finely pixelated CZT detectors for use in wide-field coded aperture 3-200 keV X-ray telescopes. A pixel size of $\simeq$ 600 $\mu m$ has already been achieved in the ProtoEXIST2 (P2) detector plane with CZT read out by the NuSTAR ASIC. This paves the way for even smaller 300 $\mu m$ pixels in the next generation HREXI detectors. This article describes a new HREXI calibration facility (HCF) which enables a high resolution sub-pixel level (100 $\mu m$) 2D scan of a 256 $cm^2$ tiled array of 2 $\times$ 2 cm CZT detectors illuminated by a bright X-ray AmpTek Mini-X tube source at timescales of around a day. HCF is a significant improvement from the previous apparatus used for scanning these detectors which took $\simeq$ 3 weeks to complete a 1D scan of a similar detector plane. Moreover, HCF has the capability to scan a large tiled array of CZT detectors ($32cm \times 32cm$) at 100 $\mu m$ resolution in the 10 - 50 keV energy range which was not possible previously. This paper describes the design, construction, and implementation of HCF for the calibration of the P2 detector plane.