Cadmium zinc telluride detectors for industrial radiation measurement

It has long been recognized that cadmium telluride (CdTe) detectors have a number of features such as room temperature operation, high count rates, small size, and direct conversion of photons to charge that make them attractive candidates for a wide variety of applications in industrial gauging and analysis, as well as medical instrumentation and other areas. However, even though CdTe detectors have been commercially available for at least two decades, they have found very limited use compared to other room temperature detectors such as Nal(Tl) scintillators, Geiger-Muller tubes, and silicon PIN diodes. This lack of interest is probably a result of technical deficiencies such as polarization effects and other problems that have been reported and to generally high prices; these drawbacks are believed to stem from difficulties in the commonly employed methods of CdTe crystal growth