Nuclear Detectors from Cadmium Telluride Grown from a Tellurium Solvent

Highly perfect and pure single crystalline CdTe, grown by the traveling heater method, has been used to fabricate gamma ray detectors. Using tellurium as the solvent, carrier concentrations as low as 5 × 109 have been obtained in as-grown material. The detectors were formed by using back-to-back Schottky barriers on opposite sides of the CdTe slice. Operation over the temperature range from + 125 to -150 °C has been observed. Excellent agreement of the experimental spectra with a theoretical model which considers the mean free drift length of both electrons and holes has been obtained. Although the energy resolution is not yet of spectroscopic quality, the detector performance is more than adequate for application to some practical devices.