Identification of the photoluminescence response in the frequency domain modulated infrared radiometry signal of ZnTe:Cr bulk crystal

In this work we investigated the photoluminescence response in the frequency domain modulated infrared radiometry signal observed of ZnTe:Cr bulk crystal. In mid-infrared range, three characteristic phenomena are observed in ZnTe:Cr crystal: absorption and emission of IR photons (2-3 μm) and the free carrier absorption. This implies that the modulated infrared radiometry signal yields information about the effective infrared absorption coefficient (photothermal response) as well about the recombination lifetime of carriers related with the infrared photoluminescence emission. In this paper, the frequency equivalence of the two-term independent exponential photoluminescence decay model in order to explain the measured frequency characteristics is proposed. The measured recombination lifetimes (2.3 μs for two exponential decay model and 1.5 μs for one exponential decay model) are in good agreement with the values given by other authors (about 2.5-3.0 μs). Moreover, we found that the photothermal response is uncorrelated with the photoluminescence one, in contrast, to the photocarrier response.