Methodological Study of a Single Photon Counting Pixel Detector at SPring‐8

PILATUS (Pixel Apparatus for the SLS) is a challenging project to develop a large area single photon counting pixel detector for synchrotron radiation experiments. SPring‐8 examined the PLATUS single module detectors in collaboration with the Paul Scherrer Institute. The PILATUS‐II single module detector has a desired performance with almost zero defective pixels and a fast frame rate up to 100 Hz using a newly developed PCI readout system on a Linux‐PC. The maximum counting rate achieves more than 2 × 106 X‐rays/s/pixel.