Photoconductivity electron lifetime

The trapped holes which recombine slowly because of their low mobility are called safe hole traps . Their presence increases the electron lifetime and the photoconductivity and seems to account for the features of the photoconductivity not explained by the simple model of Eq. (8.69) (McMahon and Crandall 1989). Safe hole traps are most significant in low defect density material, when their concentration can exceed the defect density. A detailed analysis needs to take into account the full distribution of hole traps as well as the dispersive transport of holes. The role of transitions between the band edges in the recombination process also needs to be determined. 

When a semiconductor is illuminated, electrons may be excited into the conduction band and/or holes into the valence band, producing photoconductivity. This excited condition is not generally permanent, and when the illumination ceases, the excess current carriers will decay, or recombine. The average time which a photoelectron remains in the conduction band is termed the lifetime. As the lifetime increases, the photocurrent, for a given intensity of illumination, increases. 

It is believed that surface localized electron-hole pairs produced under light in SC nanoparticles participate in photo-induced processes of charge transfer between nanoparticles. These processes most probably of quantum tunnel type determine photoconductivity of composite films containing SC nanoparticles in a dielectric matrix. The photocurrent response time in this case should correspond to the lifetime ip of such pairs, which is of the order nanosecond and even more [6]. This rather long ip makes photo-induced tunnel current in composite film possible. 

Abstract. It is shown, that the photoconductivity of Cgo single crystal essentially depends on a spin state of the intermediate electron-hole pairs. The distance between components of electron-hole pairs in states with uncorrelated spins and their lifetime were estimated as R>3.4 nm and r 10 9 s. 

Illumination creates excess electrons and holes which populate the extended and localized states at the band edges and give rise to photoconductivity. The ability to sustain a large excess mobile carrier concentration is crucial for efficient solar cells and light sensors and depends on the carriers having a long recombination lifetime. The carrier lifetime is a sensitive function of the density and distribution of localized gap states, so that the study of recombination in a-Si H gives much information about the nature of the gap states as well as about the recombination mechanisms. 

Valerian and Nespurek (1993) determined values of the electron range (mobility-lifetime product) of vapor-deposited a-H2Pc from measurements of the photocurrent action spectra. The values were about 6 x 10-12 cm2/V, considerably lower than 10-9 cm2/V reported earlier by Popovic and Sharp (1977) for /J-H2Pc. For further discussions of photoconductivity in n-type phthalocyanies, see Schlettwein et al. (1994, 1994a), Meyer et al. (1995), and Karmann et al. (1996,1997). 

Photoconductivity Op is determined by the generation rate of free carriers by light/and their lifetimes r. In the usual case in which photoconductivity is due to electrons, the photoconductivity is given by... 

What is impUed by unequal generation and recombination lifetimes The lifetime measurement techniques and the resulting lifetimes measured with them must be clearly understood to avoid confusion. For example, the recombination lifetime is measured by such methods as photoconductive decay, open-circuit voltage decay, diode reverse-recovery, surface photo voltage, electron-beam induced current and others. 

In contrast to photoconductivity, the photovoltaic effect depends largely upon the minority carrier lifetime. This is because the presence of both the photoexcited electron and photoexdted hole is required for the intrinsic effect to be observed. Because the minority carrier lifetime is usually shorter than the majority carrier one, the photovoltaic signal terminates when the minority carrier recombines. The time dependent photosignal is given by (2.1S) and (2.16), but the appropriate lifetime is the minority carrier one. For this reason, photovoltaic detectors are usually faster than photoconductive ones made from the same material. 

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