Recent Trends in the Development of CdTe and CdZnTe Semiconductor Detectors for Astrophysical Applications

Abstract

Cadmium telluride (CdTe) and cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe) offer great promise as x-ray and gamma ray detectors. Due to the high detection efficiency, the good room temperature performance and the recent improvements on crystal growth technology, CdTe and CdZnTe detectors have obtained an increasing interest in the field of hard x-ray and gamma ray astronomy. In this paper, we report on the R&D activities on CdTe and CdZnTe detectors for high energy space instrumentation. Our group has been involved in the design of new multilayer hard x and soft gamma ray Laue lens telescopes and, in particular on the development of focal plane detectors based on CdTe and CdZnTe. Here we present the activities carried out on these detectors for the evaluation of imaging, spectroscopy and polarimetry performances in the hard X and soft gamma ray energy range.