Effects of Surface Passivation on CdZnTeSe Nuclear Detectors

Cadmium zinc telluride selenide (CdZnTeSe) has shown great promise in reducing the cost of semiconductor nuclear detectors that can operate at room temperature without cryogenic cooling. This is due to the high yield of detector-grade materials in the CdZnTeSe crystal growth process, which can be attributed to the much smaller numbers of Te inclusions and grain boundary network in CdZnTeSe compared to other CdTe-based semiconductors such as CdZnTe. In the present work, we study the effects of surface passivation on CdZnTe detectors using a mixture of ammonium fluoride and hydrogen peroxide solution (NH
4
F + H
2
O
2
+ H
2
O). Detectors fabricated from CdZnTeSe crystals showed very good energy resolutions: 1.1% for the 662-keV gamma peak of
¹³⁷
Cs by Frisch-grid detectors, and 5.9% for the 59.6-keV gamma peak of
²⁴¹
Am by planar detectors. Experimental results show that the leakage current is increased immediately after passivation and then decreases as the surfaces stabilizes. The resistivity of the CdZnTeSe is of the order of 10
¹⁰
Ω-cm. The surface passivation improved the energy resolution of planar detector by 18% for the 59.6-keV gamma peak of
²⁴¹
Am.