Extremely high-purity CdTe single crystals have been obtained by the traditional vertical Bridgman technique, beginning with the refining of tellurium material by the normal freezing method. The purification effect of normal freezing on tellurium has been confirmed to be very effective. This effect was also used to prepare extremely high-purity CdTe single crystals. The crystals were characterized b low temperature high-resolution photo luminescence (PL) spectroscopy. Only a sharp peak at 1.5896eV was detected in the PL spectrum. The full-width at half-maximum is < 0.31 meV, which indicates that the crystal is of extremely high purity. To our knowledge, this is the purest CdTe single crystal prepared by the Bridgman method. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.