Physics-Constrained Co-Optimization and Data-Driven Layer-Resolved Classification of a Hybrid CZT/PIPS Detector for Mixed Radiation Fields

Abstract

Compact mixed-radiation instruments must preserve a low-mass charged-particle entrance while providing enough high-Z depth for photon sensitivity. We first compare two detector heads within a 40 x 20 x 10 mm^3 design budget. S1 places bare CdZnTe (CZT) and passivated implanted planar silicon (PIPS) branches side by side and estimates three rates. S2 adds 0.50 mm of CZT behind PIPS to estimate X/gamma, low-beta, high-beta, and alpha rates. A hard-constraint search combines photon attenuation and deposition, Hecht charge collection, charged-particle energy loss, solid angle, resolution budgeting, timing, and response-matrix conditioning. Feasible screening points exist inside the initial envelope, but a fresh transport/electronics assessment gives only 25.04-25.07 cps/(uSv/h) under the robust H*(10) convention, and every conservative electronics draw exceeds 2.5% FWHM. We therefore retain the more informative S2 observation structure, relax only the 10 mm package-depth constraint, divide the bare CZT into independently biased layers, and add a low-noise sum channel for spectroscopy plus layer-resolved gradient-boosted classification for mixed-field analysis. The extension campaign contains 2.40 million Geant4 11.4.1 histories over three depths, five transport seeds, and 14 particle/energy cases. The final 40 x 20 x 12.570 mm^3 head uses 7.870 mm of bare CZT in five layers at 180 V per layer. Under the application-scenario U95 electronics profile, its live-time-corrected 662 keV sensitivity is 32.804 cps/(uSv/h), its independent-sum resolution is 2.303% FWHM at the 95th percentile, and the propagated beta/alpha absolute-efficiency lower bounds are 35.679%/39.832%. Additional endpoint transport covers 20 keV-3 MeV photons, 3-7 MeV alpha particles, and 155 keV-3.5 MeV beta spectra. The extended design therefore passes the original detector-performance criteria in the U95 model.