Position-sensitive germanium detectors for gamma-ray imaging and spectroscopy

Gamma-ray imaging with position-sensitive germanium detectors offers the advantages of excellent energy resolution, high detection efficiency, and potentially good spatial resolution. The development of the amorphous-semiconductor electrical contact technology for germanium detectors has simplified the production of these position-sensitive detectors and has made possible the use of unique detection schemes and detector geometries. We have fabricated prototype orthogonal-strip detectors for gamma-ray imaging studies using this contact technology. With these detectors, we demonstrate that a gamma-ray interaction event in the detector can be located in three dimensions. This more accurate determination of the interaction event position should ultimately lead to better image resolution. We have also taken advantage of the bipolar blocking nature of the amorphous-semiconductor contacts in order to investigate the use of fieldshaping electrodes. The addition of such electrodes is shown to improve the spectroscopic performance of the detectors by substantially eliminating charge collection to the inter-electrode surfaces. In addition, we demonstrate that this incomplete charge collection process can also be reduced by adjusting the properties of the amorphous-semiconductor layer. In this paper, we summarize the development of these position-sensitive detectors and present the results of our studies with the detectors.