Power law photoconductivity time decay in nanocrystalline TiO2 thin films

D. COMEDI; S. P. HELUANI; M. VILLAFUERTE; R. D. ARCE; R. R. KOROPECKI

JOURNAL OF PHYSICS CONDENSED MATTER

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

Año: 2007 vol. 19 p. 1 - 10

0953-8984

The sub-band-gap excited photoconductivity (PC) time decay and the film structure of rf-sputter deposited nanocrystalline TiO2 thin films have been studied. Atomic force microscopy and x-ray diffraction measurements were used to assess roughness, crystalline structure and mean grain size of the films. Samples fabricated under different deposition conditions exhibit different microstructures and absolute PC, but similar persistent PC behaviour after switching off the light source. The very slow PC decay can be well represented by a function that is nearly constant for short times and decreases as a power law for times longer than about 100 s. This function is shown to be consistent with a rate equation characterized by a relaxation time that increases linearly with time. This behaviour, in turn, agrees with predictions of a previously reported model that assumes electron?hole recombination limited by carrier-density-dependent potential barriers associated with inhomogeneities. These results may have important implications on attempts to determine distributions of trap energies from PC decay curves in TiO2.