The ASIX project (Analog Spectral Imager for X-rays) was designed to develop new class of highly-innovative X-ray detectors that can be usedsimultaneouslyfor spectroscopy and very high resolution imaging in a wide energy band. These detectors will be suitable for high-speed data acquisition and transmission applications for space and material science observations.
The key feature that distinguishes ASIX from the standard technologies used so far is that it will read and process one photon at a time in a completely analogic way that is extremely less prone to some of the issues experienced by the available technologies.
Thanks to the high innovation level that characterizes the project, ASIX won a funding of €1,531,691.47 over 4 years granted by the Ministry of University and Research (MUR) under the Italian Fund for Applied Sciences (FISA). This fund aims at promoting the competitiveness of the national productive system through a valorisation of industrial research and experimental development, and is accompanied by the Italian Science Fund (FIS) dedicated to fundamental research.
In particular, ASIX competed in the Space macroarea and was one of the 30 winning projects out of the 482 submitted. The research will take place at the headquarters of the Pisa Section of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN).
“ASIX is a mainly industrial research project with the basic idea of using well-tested and marketed technologies to create an innovative product, which, at the same time, has a high level of engineering and a sufficiently high technology readiness level. This occurs synergistically with other parallel R&D activities conducted to explore the integration of this approach with frontier technologies”, said Luca Baldini of the University and INFN of Pisa.
