Dectris

Dectris Ltd (German: Dectris AG, French, Italian, Romansh: Dectris SA) is a Swiss company producing photon counting X-ray detectors. These are used in synchrotrons worldwide^{[2][3][4][5][6]} as well as in laboratory imaging.^[7]

DECTRIS

Industry	Electrical equipment
Founded	2006
Headquarters	Baden-Dättwil, Switzerland
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Matthias Schneebeli (CEO)
Products	X-ray detectors
Number of employees	130 (2021)[1]
Website	www.dectris.com

History

Dectris was founded in 2006 as a spin-off company by Christian Brönnimann, a researcher at the Paul Scherrer Institute, and three colleagues, Eric F. Eikenberry, Markus Näf, and Petr Salficky.^[8] In 2007, the company sold its first detector unit in the PILATUS series. In 2008 the MYTHEN detector was introduced followed by the EIGER in 2015.^[9] In January 2022, Christian Brönnimann, who had been CEO since 2006, stepped down and Matthias Schneebeli (CTO since 2017) became the new CEO.^[10][11]

Products

Dectris mainly develops and produces hybrid photon counting X-ray detectors. Three different product lines have been launched which all take their names from Swiss mountains, Pilatus, Mythen, and Eiger. All detectors use direct detection, meaning that X-ray photons are directly converted to electron-hole pairs instead of using visible light as an intermediary. This improves efficiency significantly and enables much higher count rates.^[12] Nearly two thirds of all structures in the Protein Data Bank have been solved using dectris detectors, legacy CCD detectors making up most of the rest.^[13]

In recent years Dectris has developed and started producing electron detectors.^[9]