Optical Properties of Boron-Doped Gallium Selenide

Abstract

The electronic-absorption and luminescence spectra and the kinetics of relaxation of photocurrent in GaSe single crystals and thin films doped with boron atoms are experimentally investigated. Crystals are doped either in the course of synthesis or upon growing single crystals by the Bridgman method. Thin GaSe films are obtained by thermal evaporation of the compound preliminarily doped with boron. An absorption band with the maximum at λ = 925 nm, which is attributed to boron contaminations, is revealed from the comparison of the electronic-absorption spectra of a GaSe crystal and thin films doped with boron. When the crystals are excited with Nd:YAG laser pulses of a duration of 12 ns, it is established that recombination of nonequilibrium current carriers in pure crystals occurs through rapid and slow recombination channels and in crystals doped with boron only through rapid channels. In the region near λ = 932 nm, photoluminescence is observed in the crystals doped with boron, and its half-bandwidth is 15 Å.