Oxygen doping in ZnTe is applied to a junction diode in the aim of utilizing the associated electron states 0.5 eV below the bandedge as an intermediate band for photovoltaic solar cells. The ZnTe:O diodes confirm extended spectral response below the bandedge relative to undoped ZnTe diodes, and demonstrate a 100% increase in short circuit current, 15% decrease in open circuit voltage, and overall 50% increase in power conversion efficiency. Subbandgap excitation at 650 and 1550 nm confirms the response via a two-photon process and illustrates the proposed energy conversion mechanism for an intermediate band solar cell.

Photoconductivity is observed in ZnO epilayers due to photoexcitation in the visible spectral region of 400-700 nm, below the ZnO bandgap energy of 3.4 eV. Photoconductive transients due to visible photoexcitation have time constants in the order of minutes. Treatment of the ZnO surface with SiO 2 passivation layers results in a significant reduction in the photoconductive signal and photoconductive time constant. The photoconductive response is attributed to hole traps in ZnO, where a rate equation model is presented to describe the photoconductive characteristics. A method of extracting the hole trap density spectrum is presented on the basis of the rate equation model and assumptions for hole capture lifetime and carrier recombination lifetime that are validated by experimental time-resolved photoluminescence measurements of the material under study. Traps are found to be distributed near 0.75 eV and 0.9 eV from the valence band edge for SiO 2 passivated and unpassivated ZnO epilayers, respectively.

We report far-infrared photoconductivity in self-organized InAs/GaAs quantum dots grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Through use of a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer, a photoconductivity signal peaked at 17 m is observed from a n-in detector structure with doped InAs quantum dots in the intrinsic region. Comparison of photoluminescence and band-to-band photocurrent absorption spectra suggests the far-infrared response is due to intersubband transitions in the quantum dots.

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