| Abstract Scope |
The bulk photovoltaic effect (BPVE) exhibited by non-centrosymmetric materials offers the theory of exceeding the Shockley-Queisser limit. However, improving the BPVE efficiency to a level comparable to the p-n junction-based efficiencies is challenging in practice. In previous works, a rhombohedral BiFeO3 epitaxial film demonstrated a stacked domain structure where the 71° domain walls are eliminated, which induced efficient photocurrent generation in domain walls and large photovoltage built up domain by domain. This hypothesis has remained challenging to verify with materials other than BiFeO3 until the recent advances in manipulating domain structure via AC poling in rhombohedral Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3 PbTiO3 (PMN-PT) crystals. This work takes this advantage and experimentally validates the hypothesis for the influence of domain structure on the output of BPVE. The results indicate a simultaneous improvement of 36 % and 64 % for the short-circuit photocurrent and open-circuit photovoltage, respectively, under AC poling compared to the situation under DC. |