This release of as much as 1032 ergs of magnetic energy on timescales of minutes or less generates a wide range of observable phenomena including plasma heating, violent mass motions, and the acceleration of ions and electrons to high energies. While substantial observational and theoretical progress has been made during the last two solar cycles, gaining a complete understanding the mechanism or mechanisms of this particle acceleration process remains as one of the key goals of solar physics. Observational tests of these models require measurement of the composition, energy distributions, angular distributions, spatial distributions, and production rates for energetic particles. Both cooling techniques have inherent drawbacks.
Stored cryogens are short-lived and often severely limit the mission lifetime.
Solar flare spectrometers that employ HPGe detectors are therefore large and expensive instruments. Detectors employing this new material, which should not be confused with CdTe, have many advantages over HPGe detectors. The higher average Z of the material also gives it approximately 4 times more stopping power per unit length than Ge. Until very recently, the low mobility of holes in the material limited the thickness of detectors with good energy resolution to less than a few millimeters. We note, for example, two of the high energy instruments that were selected for NASA's ''New Mission Concepts for Astrophysics'' Program specified the use of CdZnTe detectors.