Transport of electrons in lead oxide studied by CELIV technique

Although polycrystalline lead oxide (PbO) has a long history of application in optoelectronics and imaging, the transport mechanism for electrons in this material has not yet been clarified. Using the photo-generated charge extraction by linear increasing voltage (photo-CELIV) technique, we provide the temperature- and field-dependences of electron mobility in poly-PbO. It is found that electrons undergo dispersive transport, i.e. their mobility decreases in the course of time. Multiple trapping of electrons from the conduction band into the developed band tail is revealed as the dominant transport mechanism. This differs dramatically from the dispersive transport of holes in the same material, dominated by topological factors and not by energy disorder.