Development and characterization of zone melt growth GaAs for gamma-ray detectors

GaAs is a potentially attractive material for room temperature X-ray and γ-ray spectrometers. To date, the only high resolution GaAs devices were produced by epitaxial growth. The usefulness of detectors made from bulk grown semi-insulating (SI) GaAs has been limited by low charge collection efficiency caused, it is believed, by the high density of EL2 deep donor defects. Vertical zone melt (VZM) growth of GaAs has recently been developed at the Naval Research Laboratory. Zone refining and zone leveling techniques were used with VZM to reduce the level of impurities and the EL2 defects in bulk SI-GaAs. Schottky barrier and PIN diodes have been fabricated from the newly grown material. These devices were characterized using α particles and γ-rays. In this paper, the measurements and analysis of the first VZM GaAs devices are presented and compared with commercially available GaAs. The intent is to test the hypothesis that high purity, low defect GaAs material growth could lead to improved radiation detectors