Anisotropic electrical and dispersive optical parameters in InS layered crystals

The anisotropy effect on the current transport mechanism and on the dispersive optical parameters of indium monosulfide crystals has been studied by means of electrical conductivity and polarized reflectance measurements along the a -axis and the b -axis, respectively. The temperature-dependent electrical conductivity analysis in the range 10–350 K for the a -axis and in the range 30–350 K for the b -axis revealed the domination of the thermionic emission of charge carriers and the domination of variable range hopping above and below 100 K, respectively. At high temperatures ( T > 100 K ) the conductivity anisotropy, s , decreased sharply with decreasing temperature following the law s ∝ exp ( − E s / k T ) . The anisotropy activation energy, E s , was found to be 330 and 17 meV above and below 220 K, respectively. Below 100 K, the conductivity anisotropy is invariant with temperature. In that region, the calculated hopping parameters are altered significantly by the conductivity anisotropy. The optical reflectivity analysis in the wavelength range 250–650 nm revealed a clear anisotropy effect on the dispersive optical parameters. In particular, the static refractive index, static dielectric constant, lattice dielectric constant, dispersion energy and oscillator energy exhibited values of 2.89, 8.39, 19.7, 30.02 eV and 4.06 eV, and values of 2.76, 7.64, 25.9, 22.26 eV and 3.35 eV for light polarized along the a -axis and the b -axis, respectively.