Bias voltage-modulated lateral photovoltaic effect in indium tin oxide (ITO)/Si(n) structure

In this letter, a significant lateral photovoltaic effect (LPE) was found in ITO/Si(n) structure. Moreover, with an external transverse bias voltage, the LPE improves dramatically. Our results suggest that the position sensitivity of this structure increases with both laser power and wavelength, and the sensitivity can reach at least 110.2 mV/mm for 980 nm laser under a bias voltage, which is about 31.2 times larger than that of without bias voltage and is also the largest value for ITO/Si structure reported so far. More interestingly, the linearity also improves with applied voltage. We attribute this greatly improved LPE to the enhanced SB-dependent transmitted possibility of photo-generated holes. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.