Influence of infrared illumination on the characteristics of CdZnTe detectors

Infrared (IR) radiation of proper wavelength deep penetrating inside the CdZnTe detector may interact with trapping centers and has a significant influence on the trapping-detrapping processes of charge carriers from traps, thereby influencing charge collection efficiency in the detector. We studied the effect of infrared (IR) illumination on the characteristics of planar and quasi-hemispherical CdZnTe detectors. These results show that the near bandgap IR illumination significantly affects the detectors characteristics. By selecting a wavelength and intensity of illumination, detectors spectrometric characteristics can be significantly improved. Improvement of spectrometric characteristics is due to better uniformity of charge collection on the detector volume, as evidenced by the improvement in the total absorption peak symmetry and shape of the output pulses. The degree of improvement is different for various detectors depending on the characteristics of source material used for detector fabrication and theirs dimensions. For example, a detector of sizes 10×10×5 mm³ with an initial energy resolution (FWHM) of 20.6 keV at 662 keV under IR illumination was improved up to 9.1 keV, but a detector of sizes 5×5×2.5 mm³ with an initial energy resolution (FWHM) of 7.1 keV can be improved up to 4.8 keV. The IR illumination with a properly chosen intensity improves spectrometric characteristic in a wide range of energies without any losses of registration effectiveness. IR Illumination was practically performed using conventional GaAlAs IR LEDs with different peak wavelengths of emitted radiation.