The group carries out research activity in the development and application of semiconductor detectors for ionizing radiation and charged particles together with their dedicated electronics. The focus is both on the study and the design of novel detector topologies and on the characterization, setup and application of state-of-the art detectors. The group follows the entire innovation path from the detector, to the development of the required front-end and backend electronics, to the prototyping of systems to be applied in research projects or user-oriented applications. The group takes active part in interdisciplinary experiments in Nuclear-Physics, Material Science, Biomedical Engineering and Nanotechnology.

Development of high-resolution gamma-ray imagers for nuclear medicine
High-spatial resolution gamma-ray detectors have been developed for applications in nuclear medicine, gamma-ray astronomy, nuclear physics. The detectors are based on scintillators readout by Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs). Advantages: better resolution (<1mm) with respect to conventional photomultiplier tubes, insensitivity to magnetic fields, compactness, low bias voltages. In the framework of the EC project HICAM, a SDD-based gamma camera has been developed and validated in clinical trials.

Design and qualification of a Novel X-ray Diffraction/X-ray Fluorescence Imaging Suite Based on Poly-capillary X-ray Optics and energy-dispersive 2D imager
An innovative imaging suite for both X-ray Diffraction and X-ray Fluorescence measurements. Key features: polycapillary optics instead of mechanical collimators, improving the energy resolution; photon detection by custom energy dispersive X-ray imager (Controlled-Drift Detector) avoiding the need of synchrotron source; a custom X-ray source. The suite has been successfully applied.

Achievement of the maximum electron velocity in Multi-Linear Silicon Drift Detectors (MLSDDs) and their application in a prototype of Scatter Detector for Compton Imaging for Space Application
We designed and fully qualified prototypes of MLSDDs operating at high readout speeds: 1.02cm/µs (the largest drift velocity ever measured in SDDs) at 304K and at a drift field of 842.5V/cm along 11 mm drift length. A Scatter Detector for Compton Imaging for Space Application able to perform electron tracking in a single silicon layer has been successfully developed.

The first high resolution X-ray detectors based on Silicon Carbide (SiC) have been realised within a collaboration involving Politecnico di Milano, the Universities of Bologna, Firenze, Modena, Torino and the Selex Integrated System company. Proprietary Schottky and Ohmic junctions technologies have been developed allowing dark current densities as low as 1 pA/cm2 at +27°C, more than two order of magnitudes lower than in any other semiconductor detector. This allowed to realise SiC pixel array detector with the potentiality of sub-electron noise at room temperature without using cooling systems, and the acquisition of high resolution X-ray spectra with detectors operating at +100°C.

Development of digital instrumentation for adaptive filtering in demanding measurements
Exploiting the ever-increasing capabilities of fast analogue to digital converters and processing speed of FPGAs and DSP processors new capabilities were added to digital spectroscopy units: namely Weighted least mean squares linear and nonlinear algorithms for energy and occurrence time; adaptive filtering at the single pulse level. The power of digital signal processing allowed to design new instruments for nuclear physics and biomedical research.