Diagnostics of the CCD using the mesh experiment

We present here the results of a mesh experiment with which we can measure the shape of a charge cloud generated by the photoabsorption of X-rays inside a charge-coupled device (CCD). The mesh used is made of gold of 13-mu m thickness, and has many holes of 1.4 mu m diameter spaced 48 mu m apart. The CCD used has 12 mu m square pixels. A new criterion with which we can determine the precise alignment in the experiment is introduced to eliminate uncertainties. We measured the charge cloud size at three X-ray energies: Al-K (1.5 keV), Mo-L (2.3 keV) and Ti-K (4.5 keV). The shapes can be well represented not by a point-symmetric Gaussian function, but by an axial symmetric Gaussian function with sigma of 0.7-1.5 mu m. The charge cloud size depends weakly on the mean absorption length in silicon. We find that the charge cloud size can be well explained by a simple model inside the CCD. We discuss that the knowledge of the charge cloud size will enable us to improve the position resolution of the CCD. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.