Crystal growth, fabrication and evaluation of cadmium manganese telluride gamma ray detectors

Cadmium manganese telluride (Cd1-xMnxTe) is a diluted magnetic semiconductor material which forms the basis for many important devices such as IR detectors, solar cells, magnetic field sensors, optical isolators, and visible and near IR lasers. High resistivity ( > 10(10) Omega cm) and high mu tau ( > 10(-6) cm(2)/V) material, which are the two prerequisites in the fabrication of radiation detectors, has recently been demonstrated at Brimrose Corp. This paper presents the crystal growth of intentionally vanadium doped crystals, the surface preparation and contacting procedure, as well as the best detector performance obtained so far. Dark current characteristics, and low temperature photoluminescence results are also presented and discussed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.