Hand-held gamma-ray spectrometer based on high-efficiency Frisch-ring CdZnTe detectors

Frisch-ring CdZnTe detectors have demonstrated both good energy resolution, <1% FWHM at 662 keV, and good efficiency in detecting gamma rays, highlighting the strong potential of CdZnTe materials for such applications. We are designing a hand-held gamma-ray spectrometer based on Frisch- ring detectors at Brookhaven National Laboratory. It employs an 8x8 CdZnTe detector array to achieve a high volume of 19.2 cm3, so that the detection efficiency is greatly improved. By using the front-end application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) developed at BNL, this spectrometer has a small profile and high energy resolution. The spectrometer includes a signal processing circuit, digitization and storage circuits, a high- voltage module, and a universal serial bus (USB) interface. In this paper, we introduce the details of the system structure and report our test results with it.