Bulk and surface effects in segmented high purity germanium detectors

Segmented high-purity germanium detectors have been developed for a variety of experiments. The segmentation is used to augment the excellent energy resolution of such a device with spatial information to disentangle event topologies. Several performance aspects of true-coaxial segmented detectors are presented, especially the effects due to the crystallographic axes and the problem of events close to the surfaces of the detector. A test stand and Monte Carlo tools developed to study such effects are introduced. The simulation tools can also be used to design novel detectors, such as segmented point-contact detectors. A particular design is presented and discussed.