Photovoltaic properties of Pt/BiFeO₃ thin film/fluorine-doped tin oxide capacitor

We study the photovoltaic properties of the Pt/BiFeO₃ (BFO) thin film/fluorine-doped tin oxide capacitor and obtain the open circuit voltage (V _oc) of 0.44 V and short circuit photocurrent (J _sc) of 0.14 mA/cm² under purple laser illumination. As compared to the BFO film with random orientations, the BFO film with a strong preferred orientation exhibits larger photovoltaic output as a result of its larger spontaneous polarization in the unpoled state. We further demonstrate that there is remarkable influence of external electric field poling on the photovoltage in the two polycrystalline BFO films, and the larger net change of the photovoltage after positive and negative poling in the highly preferred oriented BFO film is believed to be due to its improved crystalline structure. Our experiment results indicate that the responsiveness to external electric field and photovoltaic performance of the narrow-band-gap BFO film can be optimized by structural modification, making it possible to apply in the photosensitive and other optoelectronic devices.