Effect of charge carrier trapping on germanium coaxial detector line shapes

Abstract A theoretical method to predict and quantify the effects of charge carrier trapping on germanium coaxial detector line shapes has been developed. This model was used to calculate line shapes which closely matched the measured line shapes of both conventional and reverse electrode high-purity germanium coaxial detectors that had suffered fast neutron damage. In accordance with experimentally established behavior, the theory predicts that reverse electrode detectors are vastly more resistent to the effects of neutron damage than conventional electrode detectors. The theory also predicts that the energy resolution and line shape of neutron-damaged conventional electrode detectors are far more dependent on detector diameter than are detectors of the reverse electrode configuration. The generally observed variation of the energy resolution and line shape as a function of bias voltage is shown to arise from an ¢E −1 dependence of the trap cross section on electric field.