Saketh Kakkireni

I am a graduate student working on the crystal growth of CdZnTe/CdTe for nuclear security and medical imaging applications. As a part of optimizing the single crystalline yield and charge transport properties in combination, my PhD thesis mainly focuses on the implementation of Seeding in combination with Accelerated Crucible Rotation Technique (ACRT) for growing CdZnTe/CdTe. For this purpose, a compound heat sink has been developed with the aid of thermal modelling and the seeding process is now successfully implemented at WSU. For the purpose of the detector optimization, a custom setup for evaluating the performance of thick detectors (>10mm) is built facilitating fast in-house cyclic optimization. I also worked on Chemical Polishing of CdZnTe/CdTe substrates to provide MBE ready material for our collaborators on a Solar energy-related project as a part of my Masters.