Synchrotron characterization of deep depletion epitaxial GaAs detectors

Abstract

We report the results of a series of synchrotron characterizations of two epitaxial GaAs detectors of active areas 2.22 mm2 and thicknesses 40 and 400 μm. In spite of an order of magnitude difference in depletion depths, the detectors were found to have comparable performances at ∼−40 °C, with energy resolutions of ∼1 keV full width at half maximum (FWHM) at 7 keV rising to ∼2 keV FWHM at 200 keV and noise floors in the range of 1–1.5 keV. At the lower energies, the energy resolution was dominated by leakage current and electromagnetic pickup. At the highest energies, however, the measured resolutions appear to approach the expected Fano limit; e.g., ∼950 eV at 200 keV. Both detectors were remarkably linear, with average rms nonlinearities of 0.2% over the energy range of 10–60 keV. By raster scanning the active areas with 20×20 μm2 monoenergetic photon beams, it was found that the nonuniformity in the spatial response of both detectors was less than 1% and independent of energy. The material used to fabricate the detector is extremely pure. For example, low temperature photoluminescence measurements indicate that the density of the As antisite defect (EL2) is of the order of 1012 cm−3, which is ∼2–3 orders of magnitude lower than that generally reported. This indirect measurement of material purity is confirmed by Monte Carlo simulations of the detector x-ray response, which show that in order to reproduce the observed energy-loss spectra, electron and hole trapping cross-section/density products must be ≪1 cm−1.