Amorphous lead oxide (a-PbO): suppression of signal lag via engineering of the layer structure.

Presence of a signal lag is a bottle neck of performance for many non-crystalline materials, considered for dynamic radiation sensing. Due to inadequate lag-related temporal performance, polycrystalline layers of CdZnTe, PbI2, HgI2 and PbO are not practically utilized, despite their superior X-ray sensitivity and low production cost (even for large area detectors). In the current manuscript, we show that a technological step to replace nonhomogeneous disorder in polycrystalline PbO with homogeneous amorphous PbO structure suppresses signal lag and improves time response to X-ray irradiation. In addition, the newly developed amorphous lead oxide (a-PbO) possesses superior X-ray sensitivity in terms of electron-hole pair creation energy [Formula: see text] in comparison with amorphous selenium - currently the only photoconductor used as an X-ray-to-charge transducer in the state-of-the-art direct conversion X-ray medical imaging systems. The proposed advances of the deposition process are low cost, easy to implement and with certain customization might potentially be applied to other materials, thus paving the way to their wide-range commercial use.

Characterization of polycrystalline lead oxide for application in direct conversion X-ray detectors.

While polycrystalline lead oxide (poly-PbO) is known to be one of the most promising photoconductors for utilization in X-ray detectors, its major performance parameters such as charge yield and mobility-lifetime product (µτ) are still not well established and require further investigation. Combining the conventional X-ray induced photocurrent and pulse height spectroscopy techniques we examine the X-ray photogeneration and recombination processes in poly-PbO. The measurements indicate that the amount of energy required to release a single electron hole pair W ± (inverse of charge yield) strongly depends on applied electric field and at 10 V/µm reaches ~20 eV/ehp. Fitting the measured pulse height spectra with the Hecht formula provided µτ for holes and electrons to be 4.1 × 10-8 cm2/V and 10-9 cm2/V, respectively. Obtained µτ values combined with recently reported mobility values of charge carriers in PbO suggest a new direction towards improvement of PbO technology by incorporation of Frisch grid or X-ray transistor architectures.

Charge transport mechanism in lead oxide revealed by CELIV technique.

Although polycrystalline lead oxide (PbO) belongs to the most promising photoconductors for optoelectronic and large area detectors applications, the charge transport mechanism in this material still remains unclear. Combining the conventional time-of-flight and the photo-generated charge extraction by linear increasing voltage (photo-CELIV) techniques, we investigate the transport of holes which are shown to be the faster carriers in poly-PbO. Experimentally measured temperature and electric field dependences of the hole mobility suggest a highly dispersive transport. In order to analyze the transport features quantitatively, the theory of the photo-CELIV is extended to account for the dispersive nature of charge transport. While in other materials with dispersive transport the amount of dispersion usually depends on temperature, this is not the case in poly-PbO, which evidences that dispersive transport is caused by the spatial inhomogeneity of the material and not by the energy disorder.

Bimolecular recombination coefficient as a sensitive testing parameter for low-mobility solar-cell materials.

Bimolecular charge carrier recombination has been clarified in bulk-heterojunction solar cells based on a blend of regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) and 1-(3-methoxycarbonyl)propyl-1-phenyl-[6,6]-methanofullerene using the time-of-flight method. We show how bimolecular recombination influences the charge carrier transport, how it limits the efficiency of low-mobility solar cells, and how to estimate the bimolecular recombination coefficient. We found that bimolecular recombination in these efficient photovoltaic materials is orders of magnitude slower as compared to Langevin recombination expected for low-mobility materials. This effect is inherent to the nanomorphology of the bicontinuous interpenetrating network creating separate pathways for electrons and holes, and paves the way for the fabrication of bulk-heterojunction solar cells where bimolecular recombination is not the limiting factor.

Extraction current transients: new method of study of charge transport in microcrystalline silicon

The transport properties of microcrystalline silicon, namely, mobility and conductivity, are investigated by a new method, for which the simple theory as well as numerical modeling is presented. The basic idea of the new method is verified on amorphous hydrogenated silicon by comparison with the widely used time-of-flight method. Contrary to time of flight, the new method can be used even for relatively conductive materials. Preliminary results on microcrystalline silicon clearly indicate the critical role of amorphouslike tissue in transport in microcrystalline silicon.