Large lateral photovoltaic effect observed in nano Al-doped ZnO films.

Zinc oxide (ZnO), including a variety of metal-doped ZnO, as one kind of most important photoelectric materials, has been widely investigated and received enormous attention for a series of applications. In this work, we report a new finding which we call as lateral photovoltaic effect (LPE) in a nano Al-doped ZnO (ZAO) film based on ZAO/SiO2/Si homo-heterostructure. This large and stable LPE observed in ZAO is an important supplement to the existing ZnO properties. In addition, all data and analyses demonstrate ZAO film can also be a good candidate for new type position-sensitive detector (PSD) devices.