The electrical segmentation of germanium detectors as an improvement to imaging capabilities in the hard X-ray and gamma-ray range

Abstract

A Monte Carlo simulation has been performed in order to evaluate the behaviour of hyperpure germanium detectors to electrical segmentation when interacting with hard X-ray and gamma-ray photons. The purpose of the segmentation is to create virtual pixels in a unique detector without losing efficiency. Various monoenergetic calibrated gamma-ray sources were used to determine the experimental absolute efficiency of a non-segmented detector. These values are compared to the calculated one in order to validate the model. The electrical segmentation is then simply modelized and the absolute efficiencies in the whole detector and in each segment are calculated. The improvement of imaging capabilities with electrical segmented germanium detectors is discussed.