Abstract
The ternary compound Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CdZnTe) is one of the most promising room-temperature semiconductor detectors. It possesses the necessary material properties that are required to exhibit optimal detection performance. But unfortunately it does not display that expected level of performance because it has some shortcomings at various stages from crystal growth to contact fabrication. Investigations in each area have been pursued individually over the last decades and it is a goal in the field to integrate the optimal properties from each area into a fully optimised detector. In this work, the metal contacts to CdZnTe detectors have been investigated since these are believed to be one of the most vital areas among the possible detrimental aspects. In order to evaluate the contact features, different configurations of contact were fabricated on the supplied CdZnTe detector crystals using the available laboratory facilities. A great deal of effort was put into contact design and fabrication as well as the characterisation of the fabricated devices. Endeavour was made to correlate the characterisation results of different configurations with their physical structure as well as drawing comparison with commercial devices. Work was concluded by focussing on optimum detector designs including the factors that limit their performance.