Study on electrical transport and photoconductivity in iodine-doped cellulose fibers

Abstract

The electrical transport and photoconductivity of pure and iodine-doped cellulose fibers have been studied. The studies were conducted in the temperature range 293–363 K, while the electric field was varied over the range 1–100 V cm−1. The conductivity of the iodine-doped cellulose fibers shows significant enhancement by more than four orders of magnitude as compared to undoped samples. The analysis reveals that the electrical conduction follows Ohm’s law for iodine-doped samples, while for the undoped samples the bulk-limited Pool–Frenkel conduction mechanism is likely to dominate for the steady state current. Especially, the clear photoconduction response at UV and visible region indicates that photoconduction is essential due to band-to-band electron–hole pair’s generation and that doped CF is a good conductor of photogenerated carriers.