Electrically modulated lateral photovoltage in μc-SiOx:H/a-Si:H/c-Si p-i-n structure at low temperatures

The lateral photovoltaic effect (LPE) in mu c-SiOx:Hia-Si:H/c-Si p-i-n structure is studied at different temperatures under illumination of different lasers ranging from visible to infrared. The LPE improves with increasing laser wavelength with the position sensitivity nearly linearly dependent on the wavelength in the whole temperature range. Though the position sensitivity decreased gradually with decreasing measurement temperature from 296 K to 80 K, the nonlinearity improved a little, which can be ascribed to the decreased resistivity of conductive layer. Considering that the LPE was mainly determined by the Schottky barrier (SB), an external bias voltage was added to enhance the built-in field, it was found that the LPE improved dramatically with position sensitivity linearly proportional to the laser power. More importantly, both the position sensitivity and the nonlinearity were independent of temperature again in the whole laser power range. Our research sheds new light on the bias voltage-modulated LPE at low temperatures. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.