Development of a CdTe/CZT epitaxial technology for fabrication of large area RT 1-100 keV X-ray photon detectors

This paper reports on the principles and application of H/sub 2/-transport vapor phase epitaxy (H/sub 2/T-VPE), an innovative growth technology for the fabrication of thick (i.e., up to several hundreds micron) CdTe and CdZnTe single crystal epitaxial layers for fabrication of X-ray detector arrays. Details and advantages of the method are illustrated along with properties of materials grown using a simple proof-of-concept H/sub 2/T-VPE reactor. These growth experiments, besides showing the potentials of the method, allowed also to identify critical parameters of the H/sub 2/T-VPE process and its control requirements. Such knowledge has been used to design, build and test an innovative H/sub 2/T-VPE reactor prototype, whose characteristics and operations are here described.