English

Photovoltaic effect for narrow-gap Mott insulators

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2015-05-14 v3 Materials Science

Abstract

We discuss the photovoltaic effect at a p-n heterojunction, in which the illuminated side is a doped Mott insulator, using the simplest description of a Mott insulator within the Hubbard model. We find that the internal quantum efficiency of such a device, if we choose an appropriate narrow-gap Mott insulator, can be significantly enhanced due to impact ionization caused by the photoexcited ``hot'' electron/hole pairs. Namely, the photoexcited electron and/or hole can convert its excess energy beyond the Mott-Hubbard gap to additional electrical energy by creating multiple electron/hole pairs in a time scale which can be shorter than the time characterizing other relaxation processes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0911.4933,
  title  = {Photovoltaic effect for narrow-gap Mott insulators},
  author = {Efstratios Manousakis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0911.4933},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

8 latex two-column pages, 5 eps figures (Accepted for publication in PRB)

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