0000000000958104
AUTHOR
L. Abbene
Evaluation of the Spectroscopic Performance of 3D CZT Drift Strip Detectors
CdTe/CZT is an attractive and consolidated material with which to realize detectors with good efficiency and energy resolution, operating at room temperature and suitable for a large variety of applications such as medical imaging, nuclear security, and astrophysics. Right in this last field several spectro-imagers based on these CdTe/CZT detectors were mounted onboard space missions such as INTEGRAL, Swift, and NuSTAR for hard X and gamma-ray astrophysics. Much effort has been expended in the development of CZT spectroscopic imagers for obtaining sub-millimeter spatial resolution in three dimensions (3D) and high energy resolution up to 1 MeV. The motivations are mainly related to the poss…
Charge loss correction in CZT pixel detectors at low and high fluxes: analysis of positive and negative pulses
Charge losses are typical drawbacks in cadmium–zinc–telluride (CZT) pixel detectors. The effects of these phenomena are strongly related to the interaction point of the photons and are more severe for photon interactions at the inter-pixel gap and near the pixelated anode. In this work, we present some original techniques able to correct charge losses in pixelated CZT detectors at both low and high fluxes. The height, the shape and the arrival time of collected- and induced-charge pulses with both positive and negative polarities are analysed to recover charge losses after the application of charge sharing addition (CSA). Sub-millimetre CZT pixel detectors, fabricated by different manufactu…
A CZT 3D imaging spectrometer prototype with digital readout for high energy astronomy
The scientific challenges still open in hard X-rays and γ-rays astronomy require the development of new instrumentation able to overcome the sensitivity limits of the present one. Among the technologies currently under study to cover the energy range between several tens of keV and one MeV, the development of telescopes equipped with broadband Laue lenses associated with focal planes with high spectroscopic and imaging performance represents an extremely promising solution. With this perspective, we report on the development and the first spectroscopic characterisation results of an X/γ rays detection system (10-1000 keV) based on CZT spectrometers with spatial resolution in three dimension…
Portable CdTe detection system for mammographic X-ray spectroscopy
This paper describes a portable apparatus to be utilized in mammographic X-ray spectroscopy under clinical conditions. The system, based on a CdTe solid-state detector, is able to directly measure mammographic X-ray tube spectra. Good system response to monoenergetic photons was measured using X-ray and γ-ray calibration sources (109Cd and 241Am). The measured molybdenum X-ray spectra, in agreement with simulated spectra, show the good spectral capability of the system also at high photon fluence rates, as typical of clinical mammography. Low tailing, no secondary X-ray escape and low pile-up distortions in the measured spectra indicate that this portable system is suitable for mammographic…
Recent trends in the development of CdTe and CdZnTe semiconductor detectors for astrophysical applications
Cadmium telluride (CdTe) and cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe) offer great promise as x-ray and gamma ray detectors. Due to the high detection efficiency, the good room temperature performance and the recent improvements on crystal growth technology, CdTe and CdZnTe detectors have obtained an increasing interest in the field of hard x-ray and gamma ray astronomy. In this paper, we report on the R&D activities on CdTe and CdZnTe detectors for high energy space instrumentation. Our group has been involved in the design of new multilayer hard x and soft gamma ray Laue lens telescopes and, in particular on the development of focal plane detectors based on CdTe and CdZnTe. Here we present the acti…
High-Resolution 3-D CZT Drift Strip Detectors for Prompt Gamma Ray and Neutron Detection in BNCT
Spectroscopic imagers based on high-Z and wide-bandgap compound semiconductor detectors are widely proposed for the detection of prompt gamma rays in boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT). BNCT is a therapy based on the neutron capture reaction 10B (n,α)7Li. To perform a real-time monitoring of the spatial distribution of 10B during the treatments, the detection of the prompt gamma rays (478 keV), produced by the 7Li recoil nuclei, can be helpful. In this work, we presented the potentialities of new high-resolution CZT drift strip detectors, recently developed by our group, for BNCT measurements. The detectors, exploiting the analysis of the collected-induced charge pulses from anodes, catho…