Low-Temperature Annealing of CdTe Detectors With Evaporated Gold Contacts and Its Effect on Detector Performance

Cadmium telluride (CdTe) detectors are usually subjected to elevated temperatures during postprocessing and bonding them to readout electronics while fabricating imaging arrays. We studied the effects of low-temperature and short duration rapid thermal annealing of CdTe bulk as well as CdTe epitaxial-layer-based detectors with evaporated gold contacts. The detectors were annealed in the temperature range of 100 °C–300 °C, and its effect on the detector dark current, gamma detection property, and response stability was studied. For the bulk-detectors, the detector dark current decreased and gamma detection properties as well as the performance stability improved after annealing. However, such improvements were moderate for epitaxial-layer-based detectors. The study of the metal–semiconductor interface of annealed detectors revealed that diffused gold, elemental oxygen, and tellurium oxide existed and extended deep inside the bulk portion in epitaxial detectors; however, they were confined in the surface regions only in bulk-detectors, which likely be the causes of observed results in these two types of detectors.