Home

Search

Collections

Journals

About

Contact us

My IOPscience

CdTe/CZT under high flux irradiation

This article has been downloaded from IOPscience. Please scroll down to see the full text article. 2011 JINST 6 C01055 (http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-0221/6/01/C01055) View the table of contents for this issue, or go to the journal homepage for more

Download details: IP Address: 194.57.91.238 The article was downloaded on 26/11/2011 at 06:43

Please note that terms and conditions apply.

P UBLISHED

BY

IOP P UBLISHING

FOR

SISSA

R ECEIVED: September 24, 2010 ACCEPTED: October 22, 2010 P UBLISHED: January 11, 2011

12th I NTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON R ADIATION I MAGING D ETECTORS, J ULY 11th 15th 2010, ROBINSON C OLLEGE , C AMBRIDGE U.K.

2011 JINST 6 C01055

CdTe/CZT under high ux irradiation

Matthias Strassburg,1 Christian Schroeter and Peter Hackenschmied

Siemens AG, Healthcare Sector, 91301 Forchheim, Siemensstr. 1, Germany

E-mail: matthias.strassburg@siemens.com A BSTRACT: Direct converting quantum counting detectors based on cadmium telluride and cadmium zinc telluride have been investigated with respect to their properties under intense X-ray irradiation. To derive a detailed picture of the performance of such detectors, the inuence of the electric eld, the detector thickness, the temperature and the intensity of the X-ray irradiation was studied. The results are discussed in terms of the polarization phenomenon, a reduction of the electric eld strength inside the detector due to immobile charge carriers accumulating during irradiation. Furthermore, the impact of Te-inclusions and precipitates is presented. K EYWORDS : Solid state detectors; X-ray detectors; Materials for solid-state detectors; Computerized Tomography (CT) and Computed Radiography (CR)

1 Corresponding

author.

c 2011 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA

doi:10.1088/1748-0221/6/01/C01055

Contents
1 2 Introduction Detector properties under high ux irradiation 2.1 Experimental Setup 2.2 Inuence of X-ray intensity and duration 2.2.1 Variation of X-ray intensity 2.2.2 Variation of X-ray duration 2.3 Inuence of applied electric eld 2.3.1 Pulse duration 2.3.2 Drift 2.4 Impact of detector thickness 2.5 Temperature dependence 2.6 Inuence of Te-inclusions Summary 1 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 5 6 7 8

2011 JINST 6 C01055

Introduction

Detectors based on direct converting semiconductors have been used for the detection of X-ray and Gamma rays for more than a decade [1]. Due to its high atomic number, high density, high electron mobility, low leakage current Cdx Zn1x Te (0 x 1) is a suitable candidate for such detectors and offers many advantages in contrast to silicon or germanium based detectors widely used for many years. First imaging applications based on CdTe and CZT were introduced during the 1990s [24]. The progress in crystal growth during the recent 40 years allowed a steady increase of the diameter of available single crystals. Ingots of a diameter of up to 4 inch are currently available [57]. In parallel the crystal quality was continuously improved and high single crystal yield was obtained. Hence CdTe and CZT are used for more than 30 years in different elds of science (e.g. astrophysics, particle detectors) [8, 9], industry (e.g. material inspection) [10], security (e.g. identication of nuclear fuel and scrap material) [11] and medical technology (e.g. local uptake of tracers) [12, 13]. For some applications, e.g. space telescopes, the ux is typically very low and the emphasis lies on the spectral performance. Other applications, e.g. medical imaging (Computed Tomography), need the capability to detect a photon ux of more than 1e9 photons/secmm2 [1416]. Such a detector has not been realised so far, because of the polarization effect, a reduction of the electric eld strength inside the detector [8, 17]. Immobile, trapped charge carriers accumulating during irradiation leading to a lower eld inside the detector and recombination of charge carriers are responsible for this polarization effect [18, 19]. Thus the mean height of pulses becomes smaller and hence the height of some pulses falls below the detection threshold. Finally, the total number of

2011 JINST 6 C01055

Figure 1. Schematic of drift of a pixelated CdTe/CZT detector under X-ray irradiation (a) and binning of drift values for different pixels into a histogram (b).

counted pulses (counts per second) becomes smaller with time. Polarization increases the higher the photon ux [20]. Hence many experiments and theoretical calculation were done to understand this problem focussing on a large lifetime of electrons and holes, the inuence of Te-inclusions and precipitates [2123]. However, these investigations were restricted to low ux only. In this work the authors explored the inuence of intense X-ray irradiation on the performance of CdTe/CZT detectors. The focus of the experiments is on detector drift, the temporal evolution of the detector response to a constant-in-time X-ray irradiation. Its dependence on different parameters, e.g. intensity and duration of X-ray irradiation, applied electric eld strength, detector thickness, temperature and tellurium inclusions will be discussed in the following section.

2
2.1

Detector properties under high ux irradiation

Experimental Setup

For the tests, Cdx Zn1x Te (0 x 0.2) pixelated detectors with a pixel pitch of 225 m with a thickness of 1.6mm were used [24]. The material parameters were chosen with respect to absorption, spatial and energy resolution, crosstalk as well as capability of detecting a ux of more than 1e9 photons/secmm2 . In this work, the investigations focus on the drift of the pixelated detectors under the change of different parameters: irradiation intensity, detector thickness, applied electric eld (bias), temperature, tellurium inclusions and precipitates. Here the drift is given by the change of count rate during the irradiation of the detector with a constant intensity (gure 1a). The thresholds were selected to guarantee linearity for the used pixel size at the measured X-ray ux. Small drift values are desired as high drift values lead to image artefacts in reconstructed CT images. To obtain reliable results, a plurality of pixels and several detectors, at least three, were tested. The mean value and the standard deviation of the distribution of the measured drift values are taken from histograms tting a Gaussian distribution (gure 1b). The error bars in the bar diagrams (e.g. gure 2) give the standard deviation (one sigma of Gaussian distribution) of the mean values of the different detectors measured.

2.2

Inuence of X-ray intensity and duration

The photon ux impinging on the detector during CT scans can vary over several decades due to the attenuation of the examined object. Typical scan times range between 1 second for cardio applications up to several tens of seconds for perfusions. Therefore, it is important to vary both the duration and the intensity of the X-ray irradiation. 2.2.1 Variation of X-ray intensity

While for applications with lower detected ux at the detector surface the image quality is already reasonable [25], material tests were limited to roughly 1e8 photons/secmm2 so far [26]. Therefore, the presented experimental investigations on Cdx Zn1x Te (0 x 0.2) are focussed on full, 1/10 and 1/100 of the unattenuated ux of more than 1e9 photons/secmm2 used in computed tomography (gure 2). Experiments show that polarization already occurs for the lowest tested intensity of 1/100 CT ux. The drift becomes stronger with increased intensity of irradiation. In detail, the Figure 2. Dependency of drift on X-ray intensity after drift becomes twice as strong for 10times more an irradiation of ten seconds. intense irradiation. However, the total values of drift, especially at full CT ux, show that polarization is still the main issue during the further optimization of CdTe and CZT. 2.2.2 Variation of X-ray duration

2011 JINST 6 C01055

The temporal evolution of drift is shown by the measurements of different irradiation duration. While there is small drift in the beginning, the drift becomes stronger over time and starts to saturate for full CT ux after 10sec (gure 3). Hence the difference of drift after 10sec and 100sec is small. The observed drift behavior is attributed to the polarization. The accumulation of holes leading to a reduction of electric eld increases with time since there are always new charge carriers generated during the irradiation. Hence the internal electric eld becomes smaller and smaller. This is reected by the Figure 3. Dependency of drift on duration of X-ray experimental results in accordance to the the- irradiation at full CT ux. ory [20, 21, 27]. The onset of saturation of the polarization could be explained by recombination and formation of electron hole pairs. Thus the decrease of the internal electric eld would be stopped. The measured polarization of the detec-

tor shows the necessity for improved drift behaviour of Cdx Zn1x Te (0 tomography applications. 2.3 Inuence of applied electric eld

0.2) for computed

Since the electrons have a smaller effective mass than holes usually their mobility is higher and hence electron signal is mostly used for detection in almost all semiconductor detectors. The drift velocity of charge carriers in semiconductors is proportional to the electric eld at low elds [28, 29]. For CdTe and CdZnTe this was investigated in detail during the recent years [30, 31]. For pixelated detectors additionally the so called small pixel effect occurs [32, 33]. Depending on electrode and pixel size as well as detector thickness weighting elds are introduced. Thus charge carriers inuence a pulse on the electrode much faster than transported by drift only. Since the pulse height is higher for increased applied electric eld, more pulses will be higher than the noise level. Finally, even under polarization a smaller portion of pulses will be smaller than the threshold. Hence, a reduction of drift with increased applied electric eld is expected. 2.3.1 Pulse duration

2011 JINST 6 C01055

For applied electric elds well below the drift velocity saturation eld strength, a monotonous increase of the mobility occurs, thus leading to reduced pulse duration. In experiments, such a dependency is observed (gure 4). Therefore, 50000 pulses were recorded by an oscilloscope and evaluated with respect to their full width at half maximum (FWHM). The maximum of the binning is given as the FWHM of the pulse duration at a given electric eld. Typical pulse durations are found to be 12nsec for lower and 6nsec for higher electric eld strength. These FWHM of pulse du- Figure 4. Dependency of pulse duration on applied rations are in good agreement to measurements electric eld. on CdTe and CZT detectors [34]. 2.3.2 Drift

Furthermore, the increased electric eld can counteract against the polarization phenomenon, because less traps are available. Experiments verify lower drift values for increased electric eld and their dependency on the irradiation duration (gure 5). The dependence on the electric eld shows a 4 times smaller drift for a doubling of electric eld. This is in accordance with the measured and calculated dependency of the critical ux for the onset of polarization on the applied bias [20]. The inuence of the irradiation duration is as expected and comparable to the ndings of section 2.3.1. Nevertheless, at low electric eld and long irradiation time, the polarization becomes almost complete. The relative variations from detector to detector are indicated by the standard deviation. The standard deviation gets smaller with increased electric eld. Hence material inhomogeneities

2011 JINST 6 C01055

Figure 5. Dependency of drift on the applied electric eld and the duration of X-ray irradiation.

seem to have less impact on the detector performance under higher electric eld. In addition, if higher elds are applied, the drift can be signicantly reduced. Thus, the electric eld capability of detectors is an important parameter for improved detectors.

2.4

Impact of detector thickness

For the evaluation of the impact of the detector thickness, it is necessary to separate the inuence of the applied electric eld for detectors of different thickness and the inuence of the detector thickness alone at a constant electric eld. If the same bias is applied, the detectors behave as expected due to the dependency on electric eld: The thinner the sample and hence the higher the applied electric eld the smaller the drift (gure 6a). During the initial phase of irradiation, the difference due to thickness is within in the range of the standard deviation. Here, the lling of traps is dominated by the local defect concentration and distribution. In parallel, the polarization is starting but not yet dominating over the lling of traps. Hence, the internal electric eld inside the detector is almost unchanged from the initial one. Therefore, moderate changes of the detector thickness do not have such a strong impact as observed for the polarization after longer X-ray irradiation. However, a comparison of the mean values already shows the trend of stronger polarization for thicker detectors. The inuence of irradiation duration as discussed in section 2.2 is added up to the effect of applied electric eld. If the bias is adjusted in a way that all detectors have the same externally applied electric eld, again the thinnest detector shows the smallest drift (gure 6b). This could be understood by means of total sum of defects inside the semiconductor. While the type and hence the capture cross section of the defects is the same, the generated electrons and holes have to pass a longer distance before inuencing a signal at the electrode. Due to this longer carrier drift, the probability of being trapped is increased. Therefore, thicker detectors will always suffer from more polarization than thinner ones.

2011 JINST 6 C01055

Figure 6. Dependency of drift on the thickness and duration of X-ray irradiation at constant applied bias (a). Inuence of detector thickness only at constant applied e-eld (b).

Figure 7. Drift dependency on detector temperature for different X-ray irradiation duration at full CT-ux.

2.5

Temperature dependence

Measurements of the drift as a function of temperature show deterioration with increasing temperature (gure 7). This nding corresponds to the temperature dependence of the drift velocity and mobility [30, 31, 3538]. An improvement of Ohmic detectors at reduced temperature was already observed elsewhere [39]. In addition, the effect of irradiation duration is superimposed to the temperature dependency. Thus, at longest irradiation time and an applied temperature of 70 C, some of the pixels already show entire polarization. This extreme increase of polarization with temperature suggests that such temperatures must be avoided in applications, if CdTe or CZT is irradiated with high intensity of X-rays.

2011 JINST 6 C01055

Figure 8. Inuence of density and amount of Te-inclusions on the X-ray performance of the detector. The IR mapping of different parts of the detector reveals differences in size and distribution (a). X-ray measurements on single pixels (b) reveal pixels with low drift (blue) and high drift (red) independent from the number and distribution of Te-inclusions. The binning shows almost identical drift distributions for both parts of the detector (c).

2.6

Inuence of Te-inclusions

The polarization is mostly attributed to defects. Te-inclusions and precipitates are formed during growth due to overcooling and the different concentration of Te in thermal balance at elevated and room temperature as given by the temperature vs. composition diagram [40, 41]. The interface between the Te-inclusions/ precipitates to the semiconductor crystal is likely to have a lot of defects. These defects could trap charge carriers and cause polarization. Such processes could nally lead to a deterioration of the performance of the detector. For inclusions of a size of more than 100 m, this behaviour is known [4244]. In the experiment, parts of one detector with higher and lower concentration of Te-inclusions were compared (gure 8a). The size of the Te-inclusions is smaller than 20 m. The measured drift values and standard deviations of the different regions of the pixelated detector are nearly identical (gure 8b, 8c). Hence the inuence of the Te-inclusions seems to be negligible even for certain variations of their concentration. In contrast to the inuence on drift, the different amount of Te-inclusions and precipitates having a size of below 20 m led to a signicant worse spectroscopic detector performance [45]. This shows that the number of pulses is not so strongly affected by the Te-inclusions and precipitates as the spectroscopic performance. Hence an optimum has to be found to maintain good drift and spectroscopic properties at the same time depending on the desired application.

Summary

The inuence of different parameters on the drift behaviour of CdTe and CZT under CT ux was investigated. It was found that many of the parameters, like electric eld and temperature have an inuence given by fundamental dependencies on the mobility of charge carriers. Here, the pixelated detectors behave similar to detectors with planar full area electrodes. The pulse duration of the pixelated detector on one hand was found to be acceptable for the detection of X-ray irradiation of more than 1e9 photons/mm2 sec and hence being suitable for imaging applications. The drift behaviour on the other hand needs signicant improvement. The inuence of the Te-inclusions is found to be minor for the given detectors and pixel size.

2011 JINST 6 C01055

References
[1] M.A. Wolf, J.C. Umbarger, and G. Entine, Use of a Cadmium Telluride Detector in a New Tiny Personal Radiation Chirper, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. NS-26 (1979) 777. [2] R.C. Schirato, R.M. Polichar, J.H. Reed, and S.T. Smith, High dynamic range x-ray imager employing CdZnTe detector arrays, Proc. SPIE 2009 (1993) 48. [3] F.P. Doty, S.J. Friesenhahn, J.F. Butler, and P.L. Hink, Proc. SPIE OE/Aerospace Sending 1945 (1993) 145. [4] J.F. Butler, C.L. Lingren, and F.P. Doty, Cd 1x Znx Te gamma ray detectors, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Phys. 39 (1992) 605. [5] S. A. Awadalla, H. Chen, J. Mackenzie, P. Lu, K. Iniewski, P. Marthandam, R. Redden, G. Bindley, Z. He, F. Zhang, M. Groza, A. Burger, D. R. Mayo, and C. L. Sullivan, Thickness Scalability of Large Volume CdZnTe High Resolution Radiation Detectors, Proc. IEEE RTSD R01-2 (2008). [6] H Shiraki, M Funaki, Y Ando, A Tachibana, S Kominami, and R Ohno THM growth and characterization of 100 mm diameter CdTe single crystals, Proc. IEEE RTSD R071 (2008). [7] http://www.evmicroelectronics.com/czt.html [8] P. Siffert, J. Berger, C. Sharager, A. Cornet, R. Stuck, R.O. Bell, H.B. Serreze, and F.V. Wald, Polarization in cadmium telluride nuclear radiation detectors, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. 23 (1976) 159. [9] K. Zanio, Purication of CdTe from tellurium-rich solutions, J. Electron. Mater. 3 (1974) 327. [10] W. Higinbotham, K. Zanio, and W. Akutagawa, CdTe Gamma Spectrometers for Nondestructive Analysis of Nuclear Fuels, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. 20 (1973) 510. [11] R.H. Auguston and T.D. Reilly, Fundamentals of Passive Nondestructive Assay of Fissionable Material, Los Alamos 5651-M USAEC Contract W-7405 Eng. 36. [12] M. Martini, Semiconductor Radiation Probes for Nuclear Medicine and Radiobiology the State of the Art, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. 20 (1973) 294. [13] E. Meyer, M. Martini, and J. Sternberg, Measurement of the Disappearance Rate of 75-Se Sodium Selenite in the Eye of the Rat by a CdTe Medical Probe, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. 19 (1972) 237. [14] B. J. Heismann, D. Henseler, D. Niederloehner, P. Hackenschmied, M. Strassburg, S. Janssen and S. Wirth Spectral and Spatial Resolution of Semiconductor Detectors in Medical X- and Gamma Ray Imaging, Proc. IEEE RTSD R031 (2008).

[15] S. Kappler, M. Grasruck, D. Niederl hner, M. Strassburg, and S. Wirth, Dual-energy performance of o dual-kVp in comparison to dual-layer and quantum-counting CT system concepts, Proc. SPIE 7258 (2009) 42. [16] M. Overdick, C. B umer, K.J. Engel, C. Herrmann, M. Simon, R. Steadman, and G. Zeitler, Towards a Direct Conversion Detectors for Medical Imaging with X-Rays, Proc. IEEE NMR NMR3 (2008). [17] H. Holzer and M. Schieber, Reduction of Polarization in Mercuric Iodide Nuclear Radiation Detectors, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. NS-27 (1980) 266. [18] D. Vartsky, M. Goldberg, Y. Eisen, Y. Shamai, R. Dukhan, P. Siffert, J.M. Koebel, R. Regal, and J. Gerber, Radiation induced polarization in CdTe detectors, Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A 263 (1988) 457. [19] A. Jahnke and R. Matz, Signal formation and decay in CdTe x-ray detectors under intense irradiation, Med. Phys. 26 (1999) 38. [20] D.S. Bale and C. Szeles, Nature of polarizaitonin wide-bandgap semiconductor detectors under high-ux irradiation: Application to semi-insulating Cd1x Znx Te, Phys. Rev. B 77 (2008) 035205. [21] A. Cola and I. Farella, The polarization mechanism in CdTe Schottky detectors, Appl. Phys. Lett. 94 (2009) 102113. [22] D.S. Bale and C. Szeles, Multiple-Scale Analysis of Charge Transport in Semiconductor Radiation Detectors: Application to Semi-Insulating CdZnTe, J. of Electr. Mat. 38 (2009) 126. [23] A.E. Bolotnikov, G.S. Camarda, G.A. Carini, Y. Cui, L. Li, and R.B. James, Modelling the Effects of Te Precipitates on the Electron Transportin CdZnTe Radiation Detectors, Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. A 579 (2007) 125. [24] S. Kappler, F. Glasser, S. Janssen, E. Kraft, and M. Reinwand, A research prototype system for quantum-counting clinical CT, Proc. SPIE 7622 (2010). [25] W.C. Barber, E. Nygard, T. Beck, J.C. Wessel, N. Malakhov, G. Wawrzyniak, N.E. Hartsough, T. Gandhi, K. Taguchi, and J.S. Iwanczyk, Large area photon counting X-ray imaging arrays for clinical dual-energy applications, IEEE NSS MIC Conf. Rec., M08-8 (2009) 3029. [26] C. Szeles, S. A. Soldner, M. Prokesch and D. S. Bale, Challenges of CdZnTe Semiconductor Detectors for Spectroscopic X-Ray Imaging, Proc. IEEE RTSD R011 (2008). [27] I. Farella, G. Montagna, A. M. Mancini, and A. Cola, Study on Instability Phenomena in CdTe Diode-like Detectors, Proc. IEEE RTSD R087 (2008). [28] C. Jacoboni, C. Canali, G. Ottaviani, and A.A. Quaranta, A Review of Some Charge Transport Properties of Silicon, Solid. State Electron. 20 (1977) 77. [29] P. Smith, M. Inoue, and J. Frey, Electron Velocity in Si and GaAs at Very High Electric Fields, Appl. Phys. Lett. 37 (1980) 797. [30] K. Suzuki, S. Seto, T. Sawada, and K. Imai, Carrier Transport Properties of HPB CdZnTe and THM CdTe:Cl, IEEE NSS 4 (2001) 2391. [31] P.J. Sellin, A.W. Davies, A. Lohstroh, M.E. Ozsan, and J. Parkin, Drift Mobility and Mobility-Lifetime Products in CdTe:Cl Grown by the Travelling Heater Method, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. 52 (2005) 3074. [32] J.D. Eskin, H.H. Barrett, and H.B. Barber, Signals induced in semiconductor gamma-ray imaging detectors, J. Appl. Phys. 85 (1999) 647. [33] Y. Nemirovsky, M. Ifraimov, and A. Ludwig, Effect of the geometrical parameters on the electric eld of pixelated two-dimensional arrays of -ray spectrometers, J. Appl. Phys. 88 (2000) 5388.

2011 JINST 6 C01055

[34] Y. Okada, T. Takahashi, G. Sato, S. Watanabe, K. Nakazawa, K. Mori, and K. Makishima, CdTe and CdZnTe Detectors for Timing Measurements, IEEE. Trans. Nucl. Sci. 49 (2002) 100. [35] B. Segall, M.R. Lorenz, and R.E. Halstead, Electrical Properties of n-Type CdTe, Phys. Rev. 129 (1963) 2471. [36] R. Triboulet and Y. Marfaing, Growth of High Purity CdTe Single Crystals by Vertical Zone Melting, J.of Electrochem. Soc. 120 (1973) 1260. [37] C. Canali, M. Martini, G. Ottaviani, and K.R. Zanio, Transport Properties of CdTe, Phys. Rev. B 4 (1971) 422. [38] I. Turkevych, R. Grill, J. Franc, E. Belas, P. H schl, and P. Moravec, High-Temperature Electron and o Hole Mobility in CdTe, Semicond. Sci. Technbol. 17 (2002) 1064. [39] T. Narita, P.F. Bloser, J.E. Grindlay, J.A. Jenkins, and H.W. Yao, Development of IMARAD CZT Detectors with PIN Contacts, Proc. SPIE 3768 (1999) 55. [40] D. de Nobel, Phase equilibria and semiconducting properties of cadmium telluride, Philips Res. Rep. 14 (1959) 361. [41] F.T.J. Smith, Electrically active point defects in cadmium telluride, Metall. Trans. 1 (1970) 617. [42] M. Amman, J.S. Lee, and P.N. Luke, Electron trapping nonuniformity in high-pressure-Bridgman-grown CdZnTe, J. Appl. Phys. 92 (2002) 3198. [43] V. Ivanov, L. Alekseeva, P. Dorogov, and A. Loutchanski, Correlation Between Quality of CZT Crystals and Spectrometric Perfromance of Hemispherical Radiation Detectors, Proc. IEEE Nucl. Sci. Symp. Conf. Rec. 7 (2004) 4415. [44] P.N. Luke, M. Amman, and J.S. Lee, Factors Affecting Energy Resolution of Coplanar-Grid CdZnTe Detectors, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. 51 (2004) 1199. [45] G.A. Carini, A.E. Bolotnikov, G.S. Camarda, G.W. Wright, R.B. James, and L. Li, Effect of Te Precipitates on the Performance of CdZnTe Detectors, Appl. Phys. Lett. 88 (2006) 143515.

2011 JINST 6 C01055

10