1st Edition

Photovoltaic and Photo-refractive Effects in Noncentrosymmetric Materials

By Boris Sturman, Vladimir Fridkin Copyright 1992

    Ferroelectric materials, in addition to possessing the unique property of a reversible, spontaneous polarization, exhibit a range of other significant and useful properties. These include high values of piezoelectric, pyroelectric, nonlinear optic, electrooptic, photorefractice and dielectric permittivity coefficients. Another fascinating property of ferroelectric materials is their photovoltaic effect. Photovoltaic effects have been extensively studied in the past in symmetric materials such as silicon. This volume is the first concentrated treatment of the characteristics, theory and potential applications of the photovoltaic effect in noncentrosymmetric materials, which include ferroelectrics and piezoelectrics. The book also deals with the relationship between the photovoltaic and the photorefractive effects. The latter has already been well-studied and is finding many applications in optical processing and computing. This volume should prove to be an important text as well as a comprehensive reference source for basic and applied researchers working on photovoltaic, photorefractive and other photoeffects in ferroelectrics and related materials.

    Part 1 Phenomenological description: introduction; the photovoltaic effect and photoelectric phenomena; linear and circular photovoltaic effects; polarization aspects of the photovoltaic effect in some crystal types; glass coefficients; spatially oscillating and steady currents; photoinduced fields; experiment; the magnetophotovoltaic effect; conversion efficiency; limits to the phenomenological description. Part 2 Principles of the microsopic theory: elementary-process asymmetry; basic kinetic-theory formulas for a medium lacking a centre of symmetry; the photovoltaic effect in impurity-band transitions; band-band transitions; shift PVE; the scope for nondissipative current flow; magnetic-field effects; hop mechanism; mechanisms related to spatial inhomogeneity. Part 3 The photovoltaic effect in particular materials: gallium arsenide; gallium phosphide; zinc sulfide; tellurium; quartz; sillenites; lithium niobate and tantalate; potassium niobate; barium titanate; lead germanate; barium-strontium niobate; antimony sulfoiodide; other materials. Part 4 Nonlinear optical phenomena due to the photovoltaic effect: the photorefractive effect; holographic gratings; two-beam coupling; photoinduced scattering; four-wave mixing. Part 5 Anomalous photoinduced fields: strong fields; charge-stransport model; hot-electron diffusion; charge transfer in a light-induced grating. Part 6 Phenomena related to PVE: the photothermal effect; relaxation currents; even electrical and thermal conductivities; absolute negative photoconductivity; the surface photovoltaic effect; mirror isomer separation.

    Biography

    Boris I. Sturman (Author) ,  Vladimir M. Fridkin (Author)