Study on electrical transport and photoconductivity in iodine-doped cellulose fibers

The electrical transport and photoconductivity of pure and iodine-doped cellulose fibers have been studied. The studies were conducted in the temperature range 293-363 K, while the electric field was varied over the range 1-100 V cm(-1). The conductivity of the iodine-doped cellulose fibers shows significant enhancement by more than four orders of magnitude as compared to undoped samples. The analysis reveals that the electrical conduction follows Ohm's law for iodine-doped samples, while for the undoped samples the bulk-limited Pool-Frenkel conduction mechanism is likely to dominate for the steady state current. Especially, the clear photoconduction response at UV and visible region indicates that photoconduction is essential due to band-to-band electron-hole pair's generation and that doped CF is a good conductor of photogenerated carriers.