Tyrel Kerpan BSc, MSc, BA Laboratory Technologist, Saskatchewan Polytechnic

M.Sc. Thesis Project

Cadmium-Zinc-Telluride (CZT) Radiation Detectors

CZT is a crystalline semiconductor material that is becoming widely used as the active component in a variety of radiation detection devices. The reason for the boom in CZT detectors is that they fill the gap between the high-resolution solid-state detectors (Si, Ge) and the no-resolution scintillator materials. The key advantage over solid-state detectors is that CZT can operate at room temperature, eliminating expensive cooling processes and making detectors more portable. CZT detectors can be used in medical imaging and explosives detection among other applications.

The CZT crystals have a variety of defects. These defects corrupt the electrical properties (such as free electron-hole pair creation energy, electron and hole drift mobility, electron and hole lifetime, etc) of the material, ultimately hampering the performance of the detector. It is the goal of my research to (1) link the localized structural defects of a CZT crystal to its localized electrical (detector) performance and (2) gain insight that leads to improved manufacturing and improved crystals.

I am using x-ray fluorescence (XRF) and X-ray Laue Diffraction (XLD) microprobe mapping of actual crystal detectors to map the crystal defects. I am performing these studies when the detector is in operation to fully characterize the crystal and link the localized defects to the localized detector performance.

Awards

Graduate

• Department of Physics and Engineering Physics Scholarship (Sept. 2011)

Undergraduate

• Gerry "Git" Rempel Memorial Scholarship in Physics (2010)
• Ruth and Eber Pollard Scholarship in Physics (2010)
• James F. Mathison Memorial Scholarship (2009)