The next generation of electronics will require a detailed understanding of its component materials. Wide bandgap semiconductors are one class of such materials, but the subtlety of their useful characteristics can make them difficult to study. Photoconductivity measurements are an increasingly standard way to get detailed information about the electronic structure of a semiconductor, and they open the door to mathematical modeling that provides even more insight. Photocurrent is the current through a material due to optoelectronic transitions, and a photoconductivity spectrum measures the change in a material's conductivity due to light of various energies. If the light energy is less than the bandgap, we can often attribute the revealed transition to defects called color centers. Materials with such defects are under investigation for use in solar cells, high-performance transistors, spin-light interfaces, quantum sensors, and other next-generation technologies.

This work observes photocurrent properties of cadmium selenide, an important new material, and takes steps towards photoconductivity studies of hexagonal boron nitride. We developed our fabrication process to improve the SNR of our devices and fine-tuned our measurement setup, ultimately demonstrating that we can dig up interesting information about our samples by measuring their photoconductivity.