CdTe and CdZnTe materials for room-temperature X-ray and gamma ray detectors

Among the semiconductor materials of a wide band gap, CdTe and CdZnTe have attracted most attention as room-temperature X-ray and gamma-ray detectors. Suitable CdTe materials for nuclear detectors and, in particular, for spectrometers, have been developed over the past few decades and are mainly grown via the traveling heater method (THM). However, the manufacture of large homogeneous ingots at relatively low cost has not reached yet a proven stage. Cd1-xZnxTe (CZT) materials, mainly grown via the high-pressure Bridgman (HPB) technique, possess several advantages over CdTe and appear to better approach the practicality of providing large volume X-ray and gamma-ray detectors at moderate costs. Continuing effort is still underway to improve the characteristics of both CdTe and CZT materials in order to achieve reproducible detectors for either low-and high-energy gamma rays. This review paper is divided into three parts: The first part describes different structural designs of detectors to improve their spectroscopic characteristics. These include hemispherical detectors, coplanar strip-electrode detectors and monolithic, two-dimensional segmented electrode arrays with pad sizes smaller than their thickness. This part will also describe various electronic methods to compensate for the poor charge collection of holes. The second part compares the characteristics of planar CdTe and CZT nuclear detectors containing metal contacts. Characteristics include: charge collection efficiencies for both electrons and holes indicated by the mobility-lifetime product, energy resolutions. leakage currents and robustness in field use. The third part is devoted to field uses of these detectors. Those include: X-ray fluorescent spectrometers, large volume spectrometers and a new generation nuclear gamma camera for medical diagnostics based on room-temperature solid-state spectrometers. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.