Study of semiconductor/electrolyte interface using the Fourier transformation of photovoltage response to periodic laser pulses

Charge transfer processes at the TiO2/electrolyte interface have been studi ed using periodic short laser pulses (337 nm) as probe. A model has been de veloped to determine a number of semiconductor characteristics from the Fou rier image of the photovoltage response induced by the periodic pulsed exci tation. It has been shown that the capacitance of depletion and Helmholtz l ayers, flatband potential, doping density and dielectric constant of a semi conductor electrode as well as the surface recombination rate can be determ ined by this method, even for polycrystalline semiconductor films exhibitin g non-linear Mott-Schottky dependencies. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.