The Controlled-Drift Detector (CDD) is a fully-depleted silicon detector that allows 2-D position sensing and energy spectroscopy of X-rays in the range 0.5-20 keV with excellent time resolution (few tens of us). Its distinctive feature is the simultaneous readout of the charge packets stored in the detector by means of a uniform electrostatic field leading to readout times of few m s/cm. The position and energy of the X-rays are obtained, respectively, from the measurement of drift time and amplitude of each charge packet. The advantage of this readout mechanism is twofold: i) a higher frame rate/better time resolution with respect to the Fully Depleted pn-Charge Coupled Device which represent the reference X-ray spectroscopic imager and ii) a lower contribution of the thermal noise due to a shorter integration time, leading to an excellent energy resolution also at room temperature.

In this work we present the first experimental characterization of the CDD with synchrotron light in the range 8-30 keV carried out at Sincrotrone ELETTRA. The achievable detector performances in terms of position, energy and time resolution as well as energy-resolved radiographic images carried out at a frame frequency up to 100 kHz will be presented.

The achieved room-temperature energy resolution at the Mn Ka line is better than 300 eV FWHM thanks to the short integration time showing that CDD-based X-ray imaging spectrometers operated at or near room temperature can compete with cooled X-ray imagers.