Material and detector properties of cadmium manganese telluride (Cd1−xMnxTe) crystals grown by the modified floating-zone method

Abstract

We demonstrated the material- and radiation-detection properties of cadmium manganese telluride (Cd1−xMnxTe; x=0.06), a wide-band-gap semiconductor crystal grown by the modified floating-zone method. We investigated the presence of various bulk defects, such as Te inclusions, twins, and dislocations of several as-grown indium-doped Cd1−xMnxTe crystals using different techniques, viz., IR transmission microscopy, and chemical etching. We then fabricated four planar detectors from selected CdMnTe crystals, characterized their electrical properties, and tested their performance as room-temperature X- and gamma-ray detectors. Our experimental results show that CMT crystals grown by the modified floating zone method apparently are free from Te inclusions. However, we still need to optimize our growth parameters to attain high-resistivity, large-volume single-crystal CdMnTe.