Abstract
The bulk photovoltaic effect (BPVE) rectifies light into the dc current in a single-phase material and attracts the interest to design high-efficiency solar cells beyond the pn junction paradigm. Because it is a hot electron effect, the BPVE surpasses the thermodynamic Shockley–Queisser limit to generate above-band-gap photovoltage. While the guiding principle for BPVE materials is to break the crystal centrosymmetry, here we propose a magnetic photogalvanic effect (MPGE) that introduces the magnetism as a key ingredient and induces a giant BPVE. The MPGE emerges from the magnetism-induced asymmetry of the carrier velocity in the band structure. We demonstrate the MPGE in a layered magnetic insulator CrI3, with much larger photoconductivity than any previously reported results. The photocurrent can be reversed and switched by controllable magnetic transitions. Our work paves a pathway to search for magnetic photovoltaic materials and to design switchable devices combining magnetic, electronic, and optical functionalities.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 3783 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2019 |
Funding
We thank Liang Wu, Markus Mittnenzweig, Adolfo G. Grushin, and Liang Fu for helpful discussions. N.N. was supported by JST CREST Grant Number JPMJCR1874 and JPMJCR16F1, Japan, and JSPS KAKENHI Grant numbers 18H03676 and 26103006. H.I. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP18H04222, JP19K14649, and JP18H03676. C.F. was funded by the DFG through SFB 1143 (project ID 247310070) and thanks the Wuerzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence on Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter - ct.qmat (EXC 2147, project ID 39085490). B.Y. acknowledges the financial support by the Willner Family Leadership Institute for the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Benoziyo Endowment Fund for the Advancement of Science, Ruth and Herman Albert Scholars Program for New Scientists, the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 815869) and by the collaborative Max Planck Lab on Topological Materials.