We report the observation of photo-Seebeck effect in tetragonal PbO crystals. The photo-induced carriers contribute to the transport phenomena, and consequently the electrical conductivity increases and the Seebeck coefficient decreases with increasing photon flux density. A parallel-circuit model is used to evaluate the actual contributions of photo-excited carriers from the measured transport data. The photo-induced carrier concentration estimated from the Seebeck coefficient increases almost linearly with increasing photon flux density, indicating a successful photo-doping effect on the thermoelectric property. The mobility decreases by illumination but the reduction rate strongly depends on the illuminated photon energy. Possible mechanisms of such photon-energy-dependent mobility are discussed.
@article{arxiv.1310.2492,
title = {Photo-Seebeck effect in tetragonal PbO single crystals},
author = {P. S. Mondal and R. Okazaki and H. Taniguchi and I. Terasaki},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1310.2492},
year = {2015}
}