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Published on: August 23, 2012
Giant bulk photovoltaic effect in an iron-based magnetic semiconductor
Mingliang Cheng1,2, Zheng Wang3,4, Jingyu Ji1
1Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Energy Conversion Materials for Advanced Motor, Institute of Advanced Magnetic Materials, College of Materials and Environmental Engineering, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, PR China.
None:
Efficient bulk photovoltaic (BPV) conversion and room-temperature ferromagnetism are difficult to combine, because the itinerant electrons that support magnetic order favor metallic transport, whereas BPV generation requires a semiconducting state with broken inversion symmetry. Here, we show that oxygen-plasma implantation transforms metallic Fe3GaTe2 into a ferromagnetic semiconductor with a giant BPV response, enabling zero-bias photocurrent generation in a non-centrosymmetric lattice. Oxygen incorporation localizes itinerant Fe d-electrons, induces p-type semiconducting transport and polar electronic structure, while oxygen-associated exchange pathways allow persistent ferromagnetic state above room temperature. The resulting devices exhibit spontaneous broadband photoresponse, with short-circuit current densities approaching 30 A cm-2 and a BPV coefficient up to 0.25 V-1. The photovoltaic current can be linearly programmed by low magnetic fields based on field-dependent magnetoresistive modulation. Using the experimentally calibrated device response, we demonstrate magnetically programmable feature separation and image restoration with 92.3% recognition accuracy, establishing oxygen-engineered Fe3GaTe2 as a platform for self-powered, reconfigurable magnetic optoelectronics.

