Development of Room-temperature CdMnTe Gamma-ray Detectors

CdMnTe materials have wide bandgap, high resistivity, fair electron-transport properties, and good compositional uniformity. All these features make CdMnTe a good candidate for low cost, high-resolution room-temperature gamma-ray detector. Using several techniques available at BNL, we are characterizing CdMnTe as a material for gamma-ray detectors. The consequent improvements in growth, fabrication, and manufacturing techniques for CdMnTe potentially yield a suitable material for sensing devices with lower production costs. Success of this research has the possibility of generating high impact to nuclear nonproliferation with the goal of offering inexpensive highly sensitive gamma spectrometers.