SBIR Phase I: Advanced CdZnTe for Room Temperature Radiation Detection

该小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目解决了限制碲化镉锌/碲化镉辐射探测器应用的基本问题。目前，生产医疗成像、制造和安全检查仪器的 X 射线和伽马射线设备行业是一项价值数十亿美元的业务。室温碲化镉锌/碲化镉探测器和阵列似乎是传感元件的最佳选择。然而，经过四十年的研究，仍然存在许多问题。目前尚不清楚为什么碲化镉锌/碲化镉探测器的产量仍然如此之低。根据半导体物理学，有两个参数对于确定探测器的性能至关重要：需要深能级的施主或受主将费米能级固定在带隙中间附近，以及避免捕获载流子的缺陷的必要性。 该研究的潜在商业应用可以被加速器实验室的研究人员用于颗粒分析，科学家用于晶体学，安全人员用于检查，工程师用于包装（如装瓶）的控制，以及许多医疗应用。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project addresses the fundamentalissues limiting the applications of Cadmium-Zinc-Telluride/Cadmium Telluride radiation detectors. Currently, x-ray and gamma ray equipment industry producing medical imaging, manufacturing, and security inspection instrument is a multi-billion dollar business. Room temperature Cadmium-Zinc-Telluride/Cadmium Telluride detectors and arrays appear to be the obvious choice as the sensing elements. However, after forty years of research, many problems remain. It was not clear why the yield in producing Cadmium-Zinc-Telluride/Cadmium Telluride detectors is still so low. Based on semiconductor physics, two parameters are most crucial in determining the detector performance: the need of the deep level of donor or acceptors to pin the Fermi level near the middle of the bandgap and the necessity to avoid defects which trap the carriers. Potential commercial applications of the research can be used by researchers at accelerator laboratories for particle analysis, by scientists for crystallography, by security personnel for inspection, by engineers for the control of packaging such as bottling, and for numerous medical applications.