Xia

XIA LLC invents, develops and markets advanced digital data acquisition and processing systems for x-ray, gamma-ray, and other radiation detector applications in university research, national laboratories and industry. Generally speaking, our instruments fall into three broad categories - supporting x-ray detectors, gamma-ray detectors, and ultra-low background counting. Our DXP x-ray detector electronics span the spectrum from low cost OEM cards for handheld and benchtop applications to PXI and standalone modules for ultra high rate counting at synchrotrons and elsewhere. Our DGF gamma-ray detector electronics cover an ever wider range of (typically) research applications from pulse shape analysis using high speed scintillators to very high energy resolution HPGe spectrometry, to coincidence data collection in large nuclear physics detector arrays. Our ultra-low background instrumentation combines anticoincidence and pulse shape analysis to reliably count samples producing only a few counts per day. For example, our UltraLo alpha-particle counter, developed for quality control in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, achieves background rates below 0.0001 alphas/cm2. XIA has a strong R&D component that undertakes advance product R&D, SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) grant research, and contract R&D to develop custom designs for our customers. An example is a 32 channel processor that achieves 1-2 eV energy resolution for 600 eV x-rays with superconducting tunnel junction (STJ) array detectors. The combination of the digital signal processor (DSP) and field programmable gate array (FPGA) has revolutionized the field of x-ray and gamma-ray spectroscopy, and XIA has been at the forefront of this revolution since the beginning. Starting in 1994, XIA pioneered the concept of having the DSP and FPGA work in concert, with the FPGA carrying out pulse detection, filtering and pileup inspection tasks while the DSP executed higher level post processing algorithms to produce the fastest and most powerful ...