Pulse Deficit Correction Trigger for Planar CdTe Based Gamma-ray Spectrometer

Planar CdTe produces gamma-ray spectra that typically exhibit tailing on the low energy side of photopeaks above 100 keV due to the material's asymmetric transfer properties of the electrons and holes. XRF Corporation has recently developed and submitted a patent for a novel trigger methodology that corrects for the charge deficit of photon interactions across the full depth of the crystal. This trigger also improves the resolution so that we are able to produce devices that yield a full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 1% at 662 keV using the entire bulk of the crystal. This new trigger methodology has been incorporated into XRF Corporation's ICS-4000 radionuclide identifier improving both the sensitivity and the resolution of the device.