Impact of selenium addition to the cadmium-zinc-telluride matrix for producing high energy resolution X-and gamma-ray detectors.

Both material quality and detector performance have been steadily improving over the past few years for the leading room temperature radiation detector material cadmium-zinc-telluride (CdZnTe). However, although tremendous progress being made, CdZnTe still suffers from high concentrations of performance-limiting defects, such as Te inclusions, networks of sub-grain boundaries and compositional inhomogeneity due to the higher segregation coefficient of Zn. Adding as low as 2% (atomic) Se into CdZnTe matrix was found to successfully mitigate many performance-limiting defects and provide improved compositional homogeneity.

Evaluation of CdZnTeSe as a high-quality gamma-ray spectroscopic material with better compositional homogeneity and reduced defects.

X- and gamma-ray detectors have broad applications ranging from medical imaging to security, non-proliferation, high-energy physics and astrophysics. Detectors with high energy resolution, e.g.