Characterization of a 5 mm thick CZT-Timepix3 pixel detector for energy-dispersive γ-ray and particle tracking

The present manuscript describes a comprehensive characterization of a novel highly segmented 5 mm CZT sensor attached to Timepix3. First, the sensor's IV curve was measured and basic sensor characterization was done with laboratory gamma-radiation sources. The sensor resistivity was determined to be (0.155 +/- 0.02) GOhm cm. The sensor showed decent homogeneity, both for the per-pixel count rate and electron mobility-lifetime product mu e tau e. The latter was measured to be = 1.3 x 10(-3) cm2/V with a standard deviation sigma = 0.4 x 10(-3) cm(2)/V describing the dispersion of values for different pixels. The basic sensor characterization is complemented by measurements at grazing angle in a 120 GeV/c at the CERN's Super Proton Synchrotron. The penetrating nature of these particles together with the pixelation of the sensor allows for a determination of the charge collection efficiency (CCE), as well as charge carrier drift properties (drift times, lateral charge cloud expansion) as a function of the interaction depths in the sensor. While CCE drops by 30%-40% towards the cathode side of the sensor, from the drift time dependency on interaction depth, the electron mobility mu e was extracted to be (944.8 +/- 1.3) cm(2)/V/s and tau e = (1.38 +/- 0.31) mu s. The spectroscopic performance was assessed in photon fields and extracted from energy loss spectra measured at different angles in the pion beam. While at photon energies below 120 keV incomplete charge collection leads to an underestimation of the photon energy when irradiated from the front side, at higher energies the relative energy resolution was found to be -4.5%, while a relative energy resolution of -7.5% was found for the particle energy loss spectra. It is shown that the drift time information can be used to reconstruct particle interactions in the sensor in 3D, providing a spatial resolution of sigma xyz = 241 mu m within the sensor volume and a particle trajectory measurement precision Delta(xyz) = 100 mu m, at a distance of 1 m from the sensor. We demonstrate by measurement with a 22Na source, that the energy resolution combined with the 3D reconstruction allows for detection of gamma-ray source location and polarity using Compton scattering within the sensor (Compton camera and scatter polarimeter).