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Hyperion T4 is an event-driven imaging detector built on CERN's Timepix4 chip. It records the position, arrival time and amplitude of every ion or electron that reaches the detector — in a single acquisition, across all mass channels, with no gating and no limit on how many particles arrive at once.
Delay-line detectors deliver picosecond timing but cannot separate particles that arrive together. Imaging cameras record every particle in the frame, but the Timepix3 generation stops at roughly two nanoseconds. Hyperion T4 is the first detector to close most of that gap.
An electron Newton sphere is typically less than 10 nanoseconds wide. At 4 ns resolution that yields two usable time slices — a two-dimensional measurement in all but name. At 0.6–1.5 ns it becomes seven to ten genuine slices. Ion imaging was already three-dimensional on Timepix3; electron imaging was not.
Every particle is localised and time-stamped independently — no shared dead time, no cross-shaped dead region, no reconstruction ambiguity when several particles land at once. Published work with the Timepix3 generation resolves hit pairs down to about 1 mm separation at up to 50 particles per shot. Timepix4's finer sampling improves on both.
Keeping event rates below one per experimental cycle is a limitation of the detector, not of the physics. On an event-driven detector, covariance and cumulant methods work at several ions per shot — two to three orders of magnitude more statistics for the same beamtime.
512 × 448 pixels at 55 µm gives 6.94 cm² of active silicon. Spend it on 1.75× finer sampling at your existing MCP plane, or on the same sampling across an MCP nearly twice the diameter. For microscope-mode mass spectrometry, that is four times the field of view per laser shot.
Wherever the detector rather than the ion optics sets your peak width — typical of compact and high-repetition-rate spectrometers — detector-limited resolving power rises by about a factor of three at any given mass.
Four TDC inputs at 195 ps and Timepix4's 163.84 Gbps readout are matched to MHz-class HHG sources and free-electron-laser pulse trains, where per-shot tagging of every particle is the only way to keep pump–probe scans internally consistent.
| Specification | Hyperion (Timepix3) | Hyperion T4 (Timepix4) |
|---|---|---|
| Pixel matrix | 256 × 256 | 512 × 448 |
| Pixel pitch | 55 µm | 55 µm |
| Active sensor area | 1.98 cm² | 6.94 cm² |
| Time bin width | 1.56 ns | 195 ps |
| Measured system time resolution | ≈ 2 ns | 0.6–1.5 ns |
| TDC inputs | 2 × 260 ps | 4 × 195 ps |
| Per-pixel dead time | ≈ 475 ns | ≈ 400 ns + ToT |
| Readout bandwidth | up to 5.12 Gbps | up to 163.84 Gbps |
In an optical detector the phosphor screen, not the readout, sets the floor. P47 has a rise time of roughly 5 to 7 nanoseconds; P46 and P43 are slower again by orders of magnitude in decay. A Timepix4 camera behind a P43 screen will not deliver Timepix4 timing.
The screen, the microchannel plate and the camera are one system. We will specify all three with you rather than sell you a camera and let you discover the rest. If you are rate-limited today, it is also worth knowing that a conventional chevron MCP begins to saturate around 106 ions cm−2 s−1 — often a stack redesign, not a new readout, is the fix.
Per-pixel dead time is a common question and matters less than it appears: a single particle produces a phosphor flash spread over roughly ten pixels, and successive particles land on different pixels within that cluster, so the same pixel being hit twice inside its dead time is statistically uncommon.
Configuration depends on intensifier, microchannel plate and phosphor selection, active area and software options. If you are preparing a grant application, contact us for a formal quotation and a specification sheet you can attach to the proposal.
Prices exclude customs duties and taxes. Specifications are typical values and subject to change.
The Timepix3 generation of Hyperion and TPX3CAM is behind published work across the ion imaging community.
250 kHz three-dimensional ion imaging and MHz photoelectron imaging, shot by shot, at a free-electron laser.
Bromberger et al., J. Phys. B 55, 144001 (2022)Electron–ion coincidence imaging with every particle time-stamped independently, without gating.
Nomerotski et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 88, 113104 (2017)Hydration of sodium chloride studied at the DESIREE cryogenic electrostatic storage ring, Stockholm University.
[CITATION TO BE ADDED — Schmidt et al., Nature]A redesigned detector stack reaching an order of magnitude higher ion flux, read out with an ASI Hyperion.
Golibrzuch et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 96, 063304 (2025)Timepix4 performance is characterised in Hogenbirk et al., Intensified optical camera with Timepix4 readout, JINST 21, P02004 (2026).
Hyperion T4 is available now. Whether you need a quotation for a grant deadline, a compatibility assessment for an existing spectrometer, or an upgrade path from a Timepix3 system, we can help.
