Feasibility of the use of ( ZnxHg(1-x)Te ternary compound as a spectrometer of nuclear radiations

Abstract

In this paper in order to achieve a suitable spectrometer for nuclear radiation detection at room temperature, effect of adding the element Hg to binary compound semiconductor ZnTe was studied completely. Electronic structure and transport properties of ternary compound semiconductor ZnxHg(1-x)Te (ZHT) simulated using ABINIT as a computational code based on density functional theory. According to this simulation the range of x≥0.8 was selected. This simulations including good response function compared to CdTe simulated by using MCNP as a computational code, shows that ZHT in the above range is a suitable nuclear spectrometer at room temperature.

Keywords

• nuclear spectrometer
• density functional theory
• response function