Circular Photocurrents in Large‐Area Polycrystalline Tellurium Thin Films

Helicity-sensitive photocurrents provide a direct fingerprint of broken inversion symmetry and spin–orbit coupling in quantum materials. However, it is unclear whether they persist in structurally disordered systems. Here, we report the observation of the circular photocurrents in polycrystalline tellurium (Te) thin films grown via physical vapor deposition. Under zero-bias illumination with circularly polarized light, the photocurrent exhibits the well-defined modulation characteristic of circular photogalvanic effect (CPGE). While the traditional fitting procedure makes assumptions about the structure of the signal, we also use a Fourier-based approach to extract the full set of periodic components in a model-independent way. This reveals a dominant term linked to reflectivity modulation and a distinct contribution consistent with a helicity-sensitive response. The emergence of the CPGE in a film composed of randomly oriented Te nanocrystals is attributed to its intrinsic circular dichroism. These results demonstrate that chirality-driven photocurrents can persist in disordered systems lacking long-range crystalline order. Spin- and polarization-dependent effects are thus compatible with scalable, polycrystalline architectures, supporting their integration into chiral optoelectronic and spintronic platforms.