Illumination effect on electrical characteristics of pristine PVA based broadband photodetector

摘要

In this paper, we present the opto-electrical characteristics of the fabricated PVA based photodetector on a low thermal mass platform having the capability to respond from UV to mid-IR region. The taxonomic study of current-voltage characteristics of the fabricated device has been carried out and the Metal-Semiconductor Polymer-Metal structure indicated the characteristics of Schottky diode. The barrier height (Φ) of the metal/polymer interface, the bulk resistance (R), ideality factor (n), and the reverse saturation current (I) of the fabricated device were determined. The effect of illumination was investigated on the electrical parameters in the forward and reverse bias current-voltage characteristics. It was found that the barrier height (Φ) as well as series resistance (R) decreased while ideality factor (n) increased under illumination. The insight of our study reveals that the thickness and the semi-crystalline morphology of the photoactive layer as well as the fabrication process need to be simultaneously optimized for enhancing the figure of merit of this class of the photodetector.