Thickness scalability of large volume cadmium zinc telluride high resolution radiation detectors

Abstract

This work focuses on the thickness scalability of traveling heater method (THM) grown CdZnTe crystals to produce large volume detectors with optimized spectroscopic performance. To meet this challenge, we have tuned both our THM growth process, to grow 75 mm diameter ingots, and our postgrowth annealing process. We have increased the thickness of our sliced wafers from 6 to 12 and 18 mm allowing the production of 10 and 15 mm thick detectors. As the detectors’ thickness is scaled up, the energy resolution of both types, as pseudo-Frisch grid and pixelated monolithic detectors showed no degradation indicating improved materials uniformity and transport properties.