Purpose: This study aims to analyse energy spectra formation in semiconductor X-ray pixel detectors using a simple experimental method.
Materials and methods: The calculations were performed for the pixel detectors made of high-resistivity gallium arsenide compensated by chromium GaAs (Cr). A peculiar feature of these detectors is an extremely short lifetime of the holes. When using ordinary detectors with planar electrodes the spectra with high energy resolution could not be observed. In this study, the shape of amplitude spectra of gamma rays were calculated with energy W0 = 60 and 17 keV. The calculations were performed for the pixel detector of GaAs (Cr) with the thickness of d = 500μm and pixel pitch of 50μm. The mobility of electrons and holes were assumed to be μn = 3000 cm2/Vs, μp = 300 cm2/Vs, and the lifetimes were τn = 20 ns and τp = 1 ns, respectively.
Results: It was demonstrated that in the pixel detector, where there was practically no collection of holes and the amplitude spectra occurred with the energy resolution of 3.5 keV.
Conclusion: The calculations show that energy spectra of the pixel detectors has a high energy resolution at an appropriate polarity applied bias voltage. The calculation results were conformed by the experimental data.
Keywords: GaAs; X-ray pixel detectors; X-ray spectroscopy; carrier lifetime.