Photoconductivity and high-field effects in amorphous Se₈₃Te₁₅Zn₂ thin film

Abstract

The glassy alloy of Se₈₃Te₁₅Zn₂ has been prepared by conventional rapid melt-quenching technique. The glassy nature of the prepared alloy is confirmed through X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique. A thin film of the aforesaid material was prepared by thermal evaporation technique. Coplanar indium electrode was used. Current-voltage (I–V) characteristics and photoconductivity measurements were obtained. At low electric field, ohmic, and at high electric fields (E ∼ 10⁴ V/cm), non-ohmic behaviour was observed. An analysis of the experimental data confirms the presence of space charge limited conduction (SCLC) in the glassy material studied in the present case. From the fitting of the data to the theory of SCLC, the density of defect states (DOS) near the Fermi level was calculated. Temperature dependence of conductivity in dark as well as in the presence of light shows that conduction is through a thermally activated process in both the cases. The activation energy is found to decrease with the increase in light intensity. This indicates the shift of the Fermi level with intensity. Transient photoconductivity measurements at different temperatures indicate that the decay of photoconductivity is quite slow, which is found to be non-exponential in the present case, indicating the presence of a continuous distribution of defect states in the aforesaid glassy alloy.