The development of X-ray photon counting detectors based on semiconductors has grown up over the last ten years, and applications in medicine, in security and in nondestructive testing are under study. These detectors make it possible to perform measurements at multiple energies in a single acquisition, with an excellent energetic separation. Since the years 2008-2009, it seems that a real race started for the development of detectors performing multi-energetic measurements on an increasing number of energy bands. However, today, within the works already done, the interest of performing measurements on a large number of energies has not been demonstrated for material identification. As part of a study in homeland security, we assessed the interest of using Xray counting detectors that perform measurements on multiple energy bands. The considered field of interest is material identification in the luggage of travelers. We first developed an original method for identifying single materials. This method is applicable to any type of multi-energy detector. In a first time, we studied in simulation the evolution of the performance for identifying materials with the increasing number of energy bands. An optimization process was carried out to determine, for certain configurations, an optimal geometry of the energy bands.In a second step, the consequences of taking into account the detector response function were quantified by simulating different sensors effects (charge sharing, energy resolution). An experimental validation has been performed by using a counting spectrometric detector. From the measurements experimentally obtained with such a detector, combining the data allowed us to evaluate the identification performance that would have detectors possessing a different number of energy bands. Finally, we conducted a preliminary study on the transposition of the identification method initially developed for radiography to the multi-energy computed tomography. This imaging modality allows to identify superimposed materials.
