Lateral photovoltaic effect (LPE) observed on the metal films is unusual because it violates a principle that the LPEs are always observed on the surface of a semiconductor. Compared with early studies, we have realized an obvious metal film LPE in a metal-semiconductor (MS) structure. By further arguing with experimental results, this work also intensively elucidates many features of LPE which the early models never touched upon. All the data and analyses in this study indicate that metal side LPE in MS structure has some natural superiorities to the semiconductor side LPE and may open many exciting opportunities for realizing multifunctional devices.

The lateral photovoltaic effect (LPE) can be used in position-sensitive detectors to detect very small displacements due to its output of lateral photovoltage changing linearly with light spot position. In this review, we will summarize some of our recent works regarding LPE in metal-semiconductor and metal-oxide-semiconductor structures, and give a theoretical model of LPE in these two structures.

Lateral photovoltaic effect (LPE) can be used in position-sensitive detectors (PSDs) and has a wide application in a variety of optical transducers and sensors. In this report, a large LPE with sensitivity of 42mV/mm is observed in metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) structure of Cr/SiO₂/Si. Through measuring current-voltage characteristics, we find that electron transport property in dark plays a key role and an appropriate metal thickness is crucial for obtaining a large LPE. This result is useful for applications and may explore a way to study the electron transport mechanism in nano-films’ MOS structures.

A greatly enhanced lateral photovoltaic effect (LPE) is achieved in an improved metal-semiconductor (MS) structure of ${\text{TiO}}_2\left(1.2\text{nm}\right)/\text{Ti}\left(6.2\text{nm}\right)/\text{Si}$ . Compared with the LPE in traditional MS structures of Ti(6.2 nm)/Si and other reported MS structures, this oxide-metal-semiconductor structure presents a much larger sensitivity of lateral photovoltage of 97 mV/mm. We ascribe this to the enhancement of lateral gradient of the density of excess carriers in the structure caused by the increase of surface resistivity.