Mixed conduction and anisotropic single oscillator parameters in low dimensional TlInSe2 crystals

• The anisotropic transport mechanism in low dimensional TlInSe2 has been investigated.
• The conduction is dominated by thermionic, mixed and variable range hopping.
• The anisotropic dispersive optical properties of TlInSe2 are studied.
• The anisotropy in the refractive index and dielectric constant are determined.

Due to the importance of the TlInSe2 crystal as neutron and γ-ray detectors, its electrical and dispersive optical parameters have been investigated. Particularly, the anisotropic current conduction mechanism in the temperature region of 100–350 K and the room temperature anisotropic dispersive optical properties were studied by means of electrical conductivity and optical reflectance, respectively. It has been shown that the mixed conduction is the most dominant transport mechanism in the TlInSe2 crystals. Particularly, when the electric field is applied perpendicular to the crystal's c-axis, the main dominant current transport mechanism is due to the mixed conduction and the variable range hopping above and below 160 K, respectively. When the electric field is applied parallel to the crystal's c-axis, the electrical conductivity is dominated by the thermionic emission, mixed conduction and variable range hopping at high, moderate and low temperatures, respectively. The optical reflectivity analysis in the wavelength range 210–1500 nm revealed a clear anisotropy effect on the dispersive optical parameters. Particularly, the static refractive index, static dielectric constant, dispersion energy and oscillator energy exhibited values of 2.50, 6.24, 20.72 eV and 3.96 eV, and values of 3.05, 9.33, 39.27 eV and 4.72 eV for light propagation parallel and perpendicular to the crystal's c-axis, respectively. Moreover, the frequency dependence of the dielectric constant, ε(ω), reflected strong dielectric anisotropy that exhibit maximum ε(ω) value of 38.80 and 11.40 at frequencies of 11.07 × 1014 Hz for light propagation parallel and perpendicular to the crystal's c-axis, respectively. The anisotropy in the ε(ω) makes the TlInSe2 crystals attractive to be used as nonvolatile static memory devices.

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