Large Negative Photoresistivity in Amorphous NdNiO3 Film

Alexandr Stupakov,Natalia Nepomniashchaia,Marina Tyunina,Alexandr Dejneka,Tomas Kocourek

doi:10.3390/coatings11111411

Abstract

A significant decrease in resistivity by 55% under blue lighting with ~0.4 J·mm−2 energy density is demonstrated in amorphous film of metal-insulator NdNiO3 at room temperature. This large negative photoresistivity contrasts with a small positive photoresistivity of 8% in epitaxial NdNiO3 film under the same illumination conditions. The magnitude of the photoresistivity rises with the increasing power density or decreasing wavelength of light. By combining the analysis of the observed photoresistive effect with optical absorption and the resistivity of the films as a function of temperature, it is shown that photo-stimulated heating determines the photoresistivity in both types of films. Because amorphous films can be easily grown on a wide range of substrates, the demonstrated large photo(thermo)resistivity in such films is attractive for potential applications, e.g., thermal photodetectors and thermistors.

Highlights

Rare-earth nickelates is a separate class of perovskite-structure metal oxides, whose main feature is specific resistive behavior
A significant decrease in resistivity by 55% under blue lighting with ~0.4 J·mm−2 energy density is demonstrated in amorphous film of metal-insulator NdNiO3 at room temperature
Because amorphous films can be grown on a wide range of substrates, the demonstrated large photo(thermo)resistivity in such films is attractive for potential applications, e.g., thermal photodetectors and thermistors

Summary

Introduction

Rare-earth nickelates is a separate class of perovskite-structure metal oxides, whose main feature is specific resistive behavior. The first attempts to switch MIT optically surmise the dominating influence of local sample heating due to light absorption [10,12] Another promising direction of modern research is to study the polycrystalline perovskite films, which can be deposited on cheap industrial substrates [1,13,14,15,16]. Whereas a small resistivity increase of a few percent was observed in the epitaxial NNO films, a large drop of resistivity under irradiation was obtained for the amorphous film of the same elemental composition We believe that this finding can stimulate broader research of non-epitaxial (oriented, polycrystalline and amorphous) nickelate films, which are currently practically unexplored [13,14,17]

Materials and Methods

Conclusions