Photovoltaic Devices and Photodetectors

Photonic devices play the significant roles in different modern technologies, such as electrical power generation from solar radiation, signal processing, data transmission, biomedical imaging, and environmental sensing. In this chapter, the photovoltaic and photodetection properties of low-dimensional chalcohalide materials are reviewed. Recently, these compounds have been studied as the promising light or radiation absorbers due to their tunable bandgap energies, low effective masses of the charge carriers, high charge carrier mobilities, negligible toxicity, and a high level of defect tolerance. The first section of this chapter describes a ferroelectric-photovoltaic effect and its existence in antimony sulfoiodide (SbSI), one of the most investigated chalcohalide compound. Fabrication methods and photovoltaic performance of the solar cells based on antimony and bismuth chalcohalides are further presented in detail. In the next section, chalcohalide photodetectors and their figures of merit are discussed. At the end of the chapter, the applications of the chalcohalide compounds in detection of ionizing radiation are elaborated.