PHOTOVOLTAIC EFFECT AND ITS POLARITY IN SI DOPING SUPERLATTICES

We have studied the photovoltaic effects in Si doping superlattices (nipi) under different excitation conditions with and without additional cw optical biasing using a He-Ne laser. On the basis of the photovoltaic theory of carrier spatial separation in superlattices, we propose the concept of spatial fixity of the photovoltage polarity in type-II superlattices and examine the experimental results. The photovoltaic effect in Si nipi is found mainly from the direct transitions related with shallow impurities in real space, not the electron-hole band-to-band process as in GaAs nipi.