CdZnTe (CZT) has emerged as a viable material for room temperature radiation detection applications in both bulk and pixelated configurations, however In this work we have modified CZT crystal surface, and hence the metal-semiconductor interface, by irradiating the surface with Yb 3+ ions at 5 MeV. At this energy we obtained ion implantation depth of ~1 micron and 0.05 ppm doping concentration by implanting 10 17 Yb ions per cm 3 of CZT crystal. We compared the characteristic properties and performance of the detector before and after ion irradiation. The resistivity of the bulk CdZnTe was found to be 2.45 x 10 10 ohm-cm. We employed low energy synchrotron X-rays to generate detector response map of both irradiated and non-irradiated regions of the CZT crystal. We observed non-uniform detector response in the irradiated regions. We also compared the response of both irradiated and non-irradiated CZT detectors to 241 Am. The irradiation process caused near-surface damages, which has little effect on the total active volume of the detector.