Photovoltage effects in photoemission from thin GaAs layers

A set of thin GaAs p-type negative electron affinity (NEA) photocathodes have been used to measure the yield of photoemitted electrons at high intensity excitation. The active layer thickness is 100 nm and the p-type doping ranges from 5 x 10(18) to 5 x 10(19) cm(-3) for a set of four samples. The results show that the surface escape probability is a linear function of the NEA energy. The surface photovoltage effect on photoemission is found to diminish to zero at a doping level of 5 x 1019 cm-3 The experimental results an shown to be in good agreement with calculations using a charge limit model based on surface photovoltage kinetics that assume a constant electron energy relaxation rate in the band bending region. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.