Amorphous selenium-based material could be used as the photoreceptor of a photocopy machine. For much more understanding of amorphous selenium (a-Se) photoreceptor, the aluminum oxide (Al2O3) and amorphous tungsten trioxide (a-WO3) were deposited onto polished aluminum substrates as the blocking layers using the thermal oxidation and vacuum sputtering systems, respectively. Next, we used a vacuum evaporation method for preparing the amorphous selenium film in order to complete the Al/Al2O3/a-Se and Al/a-Wo(3)/a-Se photoreceptors. The optoelectronic properties of the samples were measured and compared. We produced photoinduced discharge curves (PIDC) using electrostatic paper analyzer, and the initial surface potential (V-so), dark decay time (t(d)), photosensitivity (E-1/2) and residual potential (V-r) could be obtained. We can find that Al/a-WO3/a-Se photoreceptor has excellent optoelectronic properties. Furthermore, we also compared different blocking layers and isothermal annealing effects for the photoreceptors. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.