A new class of strongly photorefractive materials

Author

Linke, Richard A. ; Thio, Tineke ; Chadi, James ; Devlin, George E.

Author_Institution

NEC Res. Inst., Princeton, NJ, USA

fYear

1994

fDate

25-29 Jul 1994

Firstpage

221

Lastpage

223

Abstract

Certain doped compound semiconductors exhibit persistent photoconductivity (PPC) at low temperatures as a result of the optical ionization of electrons from deep, spatially localized, donor levels known as DX centers. We calculate that this release of carriers also produces a refractive index shift (through the plasma effect) which is 30 times larger than that of conventional photorefractive materials, We report the results of diffraction measurements on samples of AlGaAs which support this prediction. The induced index changes can be erased by heating above an annealing temperature determined by the material composition

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; carrier density; deep levels; gallium arsenide; photoconductivity; photorefractive materials; refractive index; AlGaAs; DX centers; deep spatially localized donor levels; optical ionization of electrons; persistent photoconductivity; plasma effect; refractive index; strongly photorefractive materials; Electron optics; Ionization; Optical refraction; Optical variables control; Photoconductivity; Photorefractive materials; Plasma materials processing; Plasma measurements; Plasma temperature; Refractive index;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nonlinear Optics: Materials, Fundamentals, and Applications, 1994. NLO '94 IEEE

Conference_Location

Waikoloa, HI

Print_ISBN

0-7803-1473-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NLO.1994.470829

Filename

470829