Photocurrent generation is a key process in optoelectronics. Typically semiconducting materials are used as the non-equilibrium charge carriers created by optical excitation can efficiently be separated to create electric current. However, this process doesn’t occur in metallic materials besides a few exceptions as the number of intrinsic charge carriers are far greater than the photoexcited ones thus no significant photocurrent generation takes place.
Dr. Kasırga’s group demonstrates that in an exemplary metallic layered transition metal dichalcogenide, NbS<sub>2</sub>, because of thermoelectric effects photocurrent generation is possible. “This study could enable fabrication of highly efficient all transition metal dichalcogenide photodetectors and solar cells as NbS <sub>2</sub> can be used as an efficient contact to most semiconducting 2D materials” said MSN PhD candidate Naveed Mehmood.
The study has been published in Physical Review B. The full text can accessed from here: https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.97.195412
