Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The successful development of lithium-drifted Ge detectors in the 1960's marked the beginning of the significant use of semiconductor crystals for direct detection and spectroscopy of gamma rays. In the 1970's, high-purity Ge became available, which enabled the production of complex detectors and multi-detector systems. In the following decades, the technology of semiconductor gamma-ray detectors continued to advance, with significant developments not only in Ge detectors but also in Si detectors and room-temperature compound-semiconductor detectors. In recent years, our group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has developed a variety of gamma ray detectors based on these semiconductor materials. Examples include Ge strip detectors, lithium-drifted Si strip detectors, and coplanar-grid CdZnTe detectors. These advances provide new capabilities in the measurement of gamma rays, such as the ability to perform imaging and the realization of highly compact spectroscopy systems.