Effects of Te inclusions on charge-carrier transport properties in CdZnTe radiation detectors

The influence of tellurium (Te) inclusions on the charge collection efficiency in cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe or CZT) detectors has been investigated using ion beam induced charge (IBIC) technique. Combining the analysis of infrared transmittance image, most of the low charge collection areas in the IBIC images prove the existence of Te inclusions. To further clarify the role of Te inclusions on charge transport properties, bias dependent local IBIC scan was performed on Te inclusion related regions from 20 V to 500 V. The result shows that charge collection efficiencies in Te inclusion degraded regions experience fast ascent under low biases and slow descent at high applied biases, which deviates from Hecht rule. This behavior is attributed to the competitive influence of two mechanisms under different biases, namely charge carrier trapping due to uniformly distributed point defects and Te inclusion induced transient charge loss. A modified Hecht equation is further proposed to explain the effects of high-density localized defects, say Te inclusions, on the charge collection efficiency.