Mercuric Iodide is the most promising of all semiconductor materials currently under investigation for use as radiation detectors at room temperature. While substantial studies have been conducted on single crystal HgI2, polycrystalline HgI2 remains a comparatively less studied form. The HgI2 films are deposited on TEC-15 LOF glass with a Tin Oxide (SnO2) coating which acts as the growth surface and front contact. The back contact, Palladium (Pd), is deposited by sputtering through a shadow mask. The films are circular in shape with an approximate diameter of 2.5 cm and thicknesses ranging from 50-600 micro m. The film has seven contact points defined by Pd electrodes for spectral response(SR) and I-V measurements. Measurements were done on the film with a visible light source. Numerical modeling helps us understand device properties and processes that take place in operation of the device. The focus of this work was to identify loss mechanisms in photoresponse, reveal fundamental device properties, and develop a quantitative device model for MSM HgI2 thin films using the DC Device modeling simulation tool MEDICI ™. The values for input parameters were chosen from literatutheory and reasonable estimates. Comprehensive studies were performed to investigate the sensitivity of SR and light I-V characteristics to each input parameter. Surface&Bulk recombinations have been investigated in this thesis. A Single, homogeneous region with all possible combinations of carrier mobilities, surface and bulk recombination parameters was not able to explain completely the measured SR. A Two-region model with the first region (0-0.5) μ m being surface&bulk recombination dominated, and the second (0.5-300) μ m bulk recombination dominated, was able to match the complete measured SR of current devices. The key parameters determined from the simulations are the mobilities, bulk lifetimes and surface-recombination velocities at the front contact for both carriers. These are consistent with expectations based upon known single crystal properties

Mercuric Iodide in its tetragonal form has received a lot of attention for many years as a prospective room temperature X-ray and y-ray detector. Its basic properties are well suited for this purpose. Its wide band gap of 2.1eV contributes to a high dark resistivity of 1012ohm-cm or higher. A high atomic number of its constituent atoms (Hg-80, I -53) and a density of 6.3g/cm3 result in its efficient interaction with incident X-ray or y-ray radiation. Single crystalline mercuric iodide has been thoroughly studied and successfully utilized in commercial radiation detectors. But with the urgent need for large area ,low cost efficient X-ray detectors, focus has now shifted towards the development and understanding of the properties of thin film Polycrystalline Mercuric iodide detectors. Such detectors also have the advantage of being most suited for direct X-ray detection i.e. a direct conversion of incident X rays into electric signals which are then used to obtain an equivalent image in digital X-ray imaging. They also can be used in applications where a scintillator intermediate is used to generate visible light from incident high energy photons.Therefore it is important to study their optical response in order to understand and evaluate their Optical Properties. The present work focuses on obtaining the Optical response of the thin film Mercuric iodide photoconductive detectors .These films were grown on TEC-15 LOF glass with a Tin Oxide (SnO2) coating on it, which acts as a growth surface for the films and also functions as the front contact of the detector.Palladium which is sputtered on top of this film acts as the back contact. There are a total of seven contacted devices on each film sample and each device has been tested for its optical response in terms of Spectral Response and I-V characteristics in both light and dark conditions.