Charge transport in detectors on the basis of gallium arsenide compensated with chromium

It is shown that, in spite of the linearity of current-voltage characteristics of ionizing-radiation detectors based on semi-insulating GaAs compensated with Cr, the charge transport in these detectors is controlled by the barrier contacts at the anode and cathode. The anode contact is antiblocking for holes and behaves as an ohmic contact, whereas the cathode contact is blocking for electrons. This circumstance gives rise to the depletion of electrons in the active region under operating conditions. It is shown that this effect can bring about a decrease in the dark currents by a factor of 3 in comparison with the calculated value of the limiting current in a resistive structure based on semi-insulating gallium arsenide, which makes it possible to reduce the detector noise.