The camera is specifically designed to work in conjunction with hyper-short, hyper-brilliant X-ray flashes. It will be installed in one of the first experimental endstations incorporated in the European XFEL next year and will contribute to drug discovery and other vital research once this facility starts operating in 2015.

The University of Glasgow key experts are (right) Dr Val O'Shea and (left) Dr Andrew Blue in the Particle Physics Experimental group, currently building detector systems for ATLAS and XFEL.

Dr O'Shea leads the  Glasgow detector development effort which focuses on new and extreme detection techniques using semiconductor sensors that leverage  nano fabrication facilities available at James Watt Centre.

Most recently, following the successful installation and commissioning of the ATLAS SCT (62 sq. metres silicon detectors), O'Shea has started to work on the detector system requirements necessary to enable an upgraded detector system to function after an order of magnitude increase in luminosity at the SLHC.

The go-ahead for continuation of the £3m prototype collaboration contract for the camera’s construction was confirmed following a visit to STFC by a delegation from the European XFEL’s Detector Advisory Committee.

The decision to entrust construction of this crucial piece of equipment to STFC recognises that organisation’s outstanding capabilities in advanced microelectronics and the design of high-tech imaging devices (eg for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN).

Now under construction near Hamburg in Northern Germany, the European XFEL is a 2-mile-long facility that will use superconducting accelerator technology to accelerate electrons, which then generate X-ray flashes a billion times brighter than those produced by conventional X-ray sources.

Each flash will last less than one hundred million billionth of a second. With the properties of laser light, these short, intense flashes will, for example, make it possible to take three-dimensional X-ray images of electron movements in single molecules.

Current leading-edge X-ray cameras are designed to capture images when matter is bombarded by a constant beam of X-rays. But the extreme brevity and intensity of the flashes produced by the European XFEL means such cameras will not be suitable for use at the new facility.

Dr Tim Nicholls (right) of STFC explains "The engineering visualisations of what our camera for XFEL will look like are a little abstract at the moment since we haven't built the final unit yet!

"This is a 1-megapixel camera that is senstive to X-rays and capable of capturing bursts of images at speeds of up to 4.5 m frames per second, so that it matches the very brief, rapidly-repeating bursts of X-rays being generated by the XFEL machine.

"The first picture  (above) shows the entire camera assembly, the grey parts are  pixel sensors themselves. These are assembled from smaller subunits (which you can see) to form a megapixel array.

Inside the box, (shown without lid  in pictures 2 (right)  and 3 (below) there are custom, high speed application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) - designed by us and fabricated commercially - which capture the electrical signals generated by the X-ray sensors and are connected to custom, high speed digital data acquisition (DAQ) cards (the pale grey units in pic 3), which were also designed by us and capture the data coming out of the camera before transferring it to a large cluster of computers for processing.

"The red area is a heat exchanger, built using aerospace techniques and cooled with water, to remove the heat produced by the high-speed operation of the camera electronics."

The device will help ensure that the European XFEL provides a unique opportunity for science and industry to understand matter and its behaviour, mapping the atomic details of viruses, for instance, or pinpointing the molecular composition of individual cells.

Dr Nicholls says: “We’re delighted that the European XFEL has turned to STFC to build this pioneering camera. It demonstrates how the UK can provide the high-tech excellence that world markets need, leading to scientific advances that make a real difference to people’s lives.”

Dr Markus Kuster, Group leader of European XFEL GmbH’s Detector Development says: “The European XFEL will represent a major step forward in equipping Europe with a new generation of research infrastructure that can meet the requirements of the 21st century.

STFC’s unique skills are creating an imaging device which will help this remarkable facility realise its vast potential”.