Hard x-rays (hxrs) from bremsstrahlung are the most direct available diagnostic of solar flare electron acceleration. This acceleration is thought to occur as a transfer of energy from the magnetic…

This federal contract award, valued at $1,161,459.90, was granted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the Regents of the University of California, doing business as the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). The contract supports the development and testing of a hard X-ray (HXR) imager detector assembly based on Medipix/Timepix detectors. These detectors will be used to observe solar flares and investigate particle acceleration, a key process in solar physics. The contract does not have a set-aside designation, indicating open competition. UC Berkeley, a leading research university, has extensive experience supporting federal agencies like NASA through both contract and grant awards across a range of scientific and technological domains.

Hard x-rays (hxrs) from bremsstrahlung are the most direct available diagnostic of solar flare electron acceleration. This acceleration is thought to occur as a transfer of energy from the magnetic fields of the solar corona into energetic particles, though the exact nature of the acceleration is not understood. To investigate flare particle acceleration, innovative new instruments will fly on cubesats and other platforms to observe the sun. These instruments will require detectors sensitive to x-rays up to ~100 KEV with an energy resolution of a few KEV or better, and with low background rates. Cadmium telluride (cdte) is an attractive material for these purposes because IT can typically be operated at temperatures requiring only passive cooling. This is particularly attractive for cubesats that DON t have room for mechanical coolers or consumables. This proposal describe the development and testing of the HXR imager detector assembly based on the medipix/timepix detectors. The medipix is a family of photon counting and particle tracking detectors developed by the medipix collaboration and designed by the microelectronics group at cern. Each of these detectors have 256 256 pixels with a pixel size of 55 m square with a total area of 14.08MM 14.08MM. We will bump-bond 4 cdte diode arrays to 4 readouts forming an array of 2X2. In addition to designing and fabricating the array, we will test and characterize these detectors in the range of 3 100 KEV for applications in space and solar astrophysics.