Crystal growth, fabrication and evaluation of cadmium manganese telluride gamma ray detectors

Cadmium manganese telluride (Cd1-xMnxTe) is a diluted magnetic semiconducto r material which forms the basis for many important devices such as IR dete ctors, solar cells, magnetic field sensors, optical isolators, and visible and near IR lasers. High resistivity ( > 10(10) Omega cm) and high mu tau ( > 10(-6) cm(2)/V) material, which are the two prerequisites in the fabrica tion of radiation detectors, has recently been demonstrated at Brimrose Cor p. This paper presents the crystal growth of intentionally vanadium doped c rystals, the surface preparation and contacting procedure, as well as the b est detector performance obtained so far. Dark current characteristics, and low temperature photoluminescence results are also presented and discussed . (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.