The coplanar-grid technique provides substantial spectral performance improvement over that of conventional detector designs and electronics when applied to gamma-ray detectors based on compound semiconductors. The technique realizes this improvement by measuring the difference between the induced charge signals from two interdigitated coplanar-grid electrodes. By adjusting the relative gain between the two grid signals prior to subtraction, the difference signal can be made less sensitive to the poor carrier transport properties of the detector material and thus improve the spectral response of the detector. In this paper, we discuss a variation of the coplanar-grid method in which the signal from only one grid electrode is read out. The signal response is optimized by changing the relative areas of the two grid electrodes and the bias applied across the detector. In this scheme, only one preamplifier is needed and signal subtraction is not necessary. This eliminates the electronic noise contribution from th additional preamplifier used in the normal coplanar-grid implementation, and conventional single-amplifier detector electronics can be used. Experimental results using CdZnTe detectors are presented.
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