High-Purity CdMnTe Radiation Detectors: A High-Resolution Spectroscopic Evaluation

The charge transport properties of a high-purity CdMnTe (CMT) crystal have been measured at room temperature down to a micron-scale resolution. The CMT crystal, doped with indium, was grown by the vertical Bridgman technique. To reduce the residual impurities in the Mn source material, the growth process incorporated a five-times purification process of MnTe by a zone-refining method with molten Te solvent. The resulting 2.6 mm thick crystal exhibited an electron mobility-lifetime product of μ
n
τ
n
=2.9 × 10
^-3
cm
²
V
^-1
. The velocity of electron drift was calculated from the rise time distribution of the preamplifier's output pulses at each measured bias. The electron mobility was extracted from the electric field dependence of the drift velocity and at room temperature it has a value of μ
n
=(950±90) cm
²
/Vs. High-resolution maps of the charge collection efficiency have been measured using a scanning microbeam of 5.5 MeV
⁴
He
²⁺
ions focused to a beam diameter <; 1 μm and display large-area spatial uniformity. The evolution of charge collection uniformity across the detector has been highlighted by acquiring measurements at applied biases ranging between 50 V and 1100 V. Charge transport inhomogeneity has been associated with the presence of bulk defects. It has been demonstrated that minimizing the content of impurities in the MnTe source material is highly effective in achieving major improvements in the CMT detector's performance as compared to previous data.