Studies of photoconductivity in β-Apo-8′ carotenal

The photoconductive properties of a carotenoid polyene,β-Apo-8′ carotenal in polycrystalline form has been studied. The growth of the photocurrent shows an overshoot in the growth-time curve before steady state value is attained. This behaviour of photocurrent is proposed to be due to higher value of recombination coefficient than trapping coefficient. From the temperature dependence study it is observed that the steady state photocurrent, at first increases with increase of temperature, attains a maximum at a particular temperatureT _max and then decreases with temperature. TheT _max value agrees with the temperature above and below which steady state photocurrent is attained differently. Monomolecular and bimolecular recombination processes at two temperature regimes are proposed to account for the observed behaviour. The dependence of photocurrent with excitation light intensity and wavelength study provide information on the carrier generation processes. The fast decay of photocurrent have been observed at different temperatures and from this study the decay constant is calculated and it is found to be temperature independent.