Magnetic field-driven lateral photovoltaic effect in the Fe/SiO2/p-Si hybrid structure with the Schottky barrier

Abstract

We demonstrate that the lateral photovoltaic effect in the Fe/SiO 2 /p-Si structure not only strongly depends on the optical radiation wavelength and temperature, but is also sensitive to external magnetic fields. The magnetic field lowers the absolute value of photovoltage regardless of the wavelength and temperature; however, the relative photovoltage variation significantly depends on these parameters. The lateral photovoltage is observed both on the Fe film and Si substrate sides and results from separation of photoinduced electrons and holes in a built-in electric field of the Schottky barrier with their subsequent diffusion to the structure in the lateral direction from the illuminated area. The observed features in the behavior of the lateral photovoltaic effect originate from the variation in the light absorption coefficient of the semiconductor and the related quantum efficiency upon light wavelength variation. In addition, an important role is played by the change in the characteristics of the Schottky barrier at the redistribution of optically generated carriers and temperature variation. The effect of the magnetic field is attributed to the Lorentz force, which bends trajectories of carriers drifting under the action of the Schottky barrier field and, consequently, suppresses the lateral photovoltaic effect.

Lateral Photovoltaic Effect and Photo‐Induced Resistance Effect in Nanoscale Metal‐Semiconductor Systems

“…Except for the magnetic susceptibility, LPE can also own a temperature dependence in Fe/SiO 2 /p‐Si structure reported by Volkov et al . As shown in Figure a, LPV are measured in such structures respectively at Si side (V 14 ) and Fe side (V 23 ), where V 14 displays a nonmonotonical variation with temperature shown in Figure b.…”

“…It is mainly because the acceptor levels in p‐Si start trapping holes, and makes the number of majority carriers (holes) decrease rapidly. Thus, the semiconductor tends to become intrinsic and the sign of V 14 changes (red line), which indicates that V 14 is now dominated by electrons rather than holes and the Schottky field is much weaker than before . The strong decrease of Schottky field means the contribution of concentration diffusion is more significant to V 14 .…”

“…Insets are the logarithm of LPV as a function of the reciprocal of temperature. Reproduced with permission . Copyright 2019, Elsevier.…”

Application of Arduino Module to Research in Surface Physics

“…There are two simultaneously and competitive mechanisms -thermal excitation of electrons and photoconductivity. The much more information in field of physics of photomagnetoelectric phenomena are in works (Kończak and Nowak, 1979;Nowak, 1987;Nowak et al, 2014;Volkov et al, 2018). When the electrons in the place of laser beam impact are intensively exited to conduction band and they move around circles in the plane of wafer which is caused by the magnetic field (perpendicular to the wafer plane).…”

Transient lateral photovoltaic effect observed in Ti–SiO2–Si structure

“…Because the lateral photovoltage (LPV) varies linearly with the laser spot position, LPE has been used in shaft encoders, charge-coupled devices, quadrant detectors, positionsensitive detectors, optical positioning sensors, and many other sensors [3][4][5][6]. Various structures such as perovskite PN junctions, modulated doped AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructures, hydrogenated amorphous silicon, Schottky barrier structures, silk protein-based nanocomposite structures, metal-oxidesemiconductor (MOS) structures, metal-semiconductor structures have been investigated by LPE [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”