Investigation of the peak shape parameter of CdZnTe detectors

There is a need to define the magnitude of the asymmetry of the peak shapes (the tailing fraction) of CdTe and CdZnTe detectors. Since this tailing parameter determines to a large extent, the performance of peak fitting programs used to extract the peak areas from gamma spectra taken for the verification of nuclear material, a well-defined knowledge of this parameter is an important factor in such programs. The magnitude of the asymmetry of this tailing fraction was investigated for different models of CdTe and CdZnTe detectors. The gamma peak analysis program PkCheck (R. Gunnink, R. Arlt, Proceedings of 11th International Workshop on room temperature Semiconductor X- and gamma-ray detectors and associated electronics, 11–15 October 1999, Vienna, Austria, Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 485 (2001) 196, This issue) was used to determine the tailing fraction as a function of detector type, high voltage and other operational parameters. Although there are considerable individual differences between different detector units of the same model, a general trend towards the growing of the tailing fraction with increasing detector volume was clearly observed. The lowest fractions are observed for electrically cooled planar pin CdTe detectors operated with a charge loss corrector, followed by small size hemispheric CdZnTe detectors.