Photoinduced Schottky barrier in photorefractive materials

We report on the first experimental evidence of a Schottky barrier effect produced by the action of light in an otherwise purely Ohmic contact between a nominally undoped photorefractive titanosillenite Bi12TiO20 crystal and a transparent conductive SnO2 electrode. The photorefractive crystal is sandwiched between two transparent electrodes and a Schottky barrier is built up in the illuminated crystal-electrode interface under the action of light with photonic energy large enough to excite charge carriers from the Fermi level into the conduction band. The contact remains purely Ohmic under illumination with photonic energy below that of the Fermi gap and the photoinduced barrier almost disappears if the photonic energy is large enough to produce electron-hole pairs.