Investigation of photoelectronic processes in CdIn2S4 by photoinduced current transient spectroscopy

Photoelectronic processes in CdIn2S4 are investigated by four-gate photoinduced current transient spectroscopy. In general the photocurrent decay transients are non-exponential because of a nonlinear multichannel recombination mechanism. Nevertheless suitable extrinsic excitation allows to open one recombination channel only and so to evidence a purely exponential relaxation. The detailed analysis of this process leads to the interpretation that the defects associated with the energy levels continuously distributed below the conduction band act as relay centres for radiative recombination of photoelectrons rather than as thermal emitting traps. An electron trapping level located at about 0.6 eV from the bottom of the conduction band is also evidenced. (author)