(1) University of Glasgow, Kelvin Building, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland.
(2) CERN, Genève, Switzerland.
(3) University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A.
(4) The Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, Plymouth, England.
We present the development of a high-speed, single photon counting, Hybrid Photo Detector (HPD). The HPD consists of a vacuum tube, containing the detector assembly, sealed with a transparent optical input window. Photons incident on the photocathode eject a photoelectron into a large electric field which accelerates the incident electron onto a silicon detector. The silicon detector is bump bonded to a Medipix readout chip. This set-up allows for the detection and readout of low incident photon intensities at rates which are otherwise unattainable with current camera technology. Reported is the fabrication of the camera which brings together a range of sophisticated design and fabrication techniques and the expected theoretical imaging performace. Applications to cellular and molecular microscopy are also described in which single photon counting abilities at high frame rates are crucial.