Patent ID: 7323759

Claim:
A photosensor for detecting a direction of movement of the intensity maxima and intensity minima in an intensity profile of an optical standing wave using a transmitted-light method, said photosensor comprising: a transparent substrate; first and second essentially transparent semiconductor components; and at least one of a contact layer and an insulating layer, wherein said first semiconductor component is connected with said second semiconductor component by said one of said contact layer and said insulating layer, wherein said first semiconductor component includes a first transparent photoelectrically inactive semiconductor layer and a first transparent photoelectrically active semiconductor layer and said second semiconductor layer includes a second transparent photoelectrically inactive semiconductor layer and a second transparent photoelectrically active semiconductor layer, said first and second semiconductor components having a fixed phase relation to each other, said first photoelectrically active semiconductor layer of said first semiconductor component having a layer thickness d s1 parallel to the direction of propagation of the standing wave of d s1 <λ/4n s1 , and said second photoelectrically active semiconductor layer of said second semiconductor component having a layer thickness d s2 parallel to the direction of propagation of the standing wave of d s2 <λ/4n s2 , where λ is the wavelength of the optical coherent wave, and n s1 and n s2 are the indices of refraction of the photoelectrically active semiconductor layers of said first and second essentially transparent semiconductors; and wherein said first and second semiconductor components comprise one of photoconductors, Schottky barrier diodes, pin, nip, pip, nin, npin, pnip, pinp, nipn structures, and combinations of these structures, wherein a charge transfer within said photosensors is applicable either parallel to or perpendicularly to the direction of propagation of the standing wave.