Electrical properties of polycrystalline mercury iodide film

Abstract The outstanding properties of mercury iodide make it an ideal material as room temperature X-ray and gamma-ray detectors. For this purpose, electrical and irradiation properties of high quality polycrystalline HgI 2 detector are investigated at room temperature under irradiation conditions by 5.9 keV X-ray irradiation from a 55 Fe source. For (0 0 1)-oriented polycrystalline HgI 2 film, the dark current is in the order of 10 −10  A and photocurrent is in the order of 10 −9  A with the applied voltage of 40 V. However, a good signal to noise ratio of 4.44 and an energy resolution of 4.1% for X-ray detecting is also obtained.