Experimental study of the hot-carrier impact ionization photovoltaic effect in pulsed-CO2-laser-excited silicon junctions

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Abstract
An experimental study has been carried out on the dependence of the hot-carrier highly nonlinear photovoltaic effect induced in silicon n+/p junctions by 10.6 µm laser pulses on the doping level and the carrier density profile. The measured response is optimized by using narrow step junctions and a high doping level n+≈1020 cm-3. The main features of the obtained results can be qualitatively interpreted by taking the following into account: conditions for a thermalized hot-carrier plasma, generation rate by impact ionization processes, generated minority diffusion current and recombination and absorption losses.