Search Menu
DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
Search Scholarly Publications

Title: Time-resolved correlative optical microscopy of charge-carrier transport, recombination, and space-charge fields in CdTe heterostructures

Abstract

From time- and spatially resolved optical measurements, we show that extended defects can have a large effect on the charge-carrier recombination in II-VI semiconductors. In CdTe double heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy on the InSb (100)-orientation substrates, we characterized the extended defects and found that near stacking faults the space-charge field extends by 2-5 μm. Charge carriers drift (with the space-charge field strength of 730-1,360 V cm-1) and diffuse (with the mobility of 260 ± 30 cm2 V-1 s-1) toward the extended defects, where the minority-carrier lifetime is reduced from 560 ns to 0.25 ns. Furthermore, the extended defects are nonradiative recombination sinks that affect areas significantly larger than the typical crystalline grains in II-VI solar cells. From the correlative time-resolved photoluminescence and second-harmonic generation microscopy data, we developed a band-diagram model that can be used to analyze the impact of extended defects on solar cells and other electronic devices.

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [3]
+ Show Author Affiliations
  1. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
  2. Texas State Univ., San Marcos, TX (United States)
  3. Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office
OSTI Identifier:
1349803
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1348947
Report Number(s):
NREL/JA-5900-67479
Journal ID: ISSN 0003-6951; TRN: US1700704
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC36-08GO28308; AC36-08-GO28308
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Applied Physics Letters
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 110; Journal Issue: 8; Journal ID: ISSN 0003-6951
Publisher:
American Institute of Physics (AIP)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
14 SOLAR ENERGY; 71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; photoluminescence; second harmonic generation; heterojunctions; solar cells; charge carriers

Citation Formats

Kuciauskas, Darius, Myers, Thomas H., Barnes, Teresa M., Jensen, Søren A., and Allende Motz, Alyssa M. Time-resolved correlative optical microscopy of charge-carrier transport, recombination, and space-charge fields in CdTe heterostructures. United States: N. p., 2017. Web. doi:10.1063/1.4976696.
Copy to clipboard
Kuciauskas, Darius, Myers, Thomas H., Barnes, Teresa M., Jensen, Søren A., & Allende Motz, Alyssa M. Time-resolved correlative optical microscopy of charge-carrier transport, recombination, and space-charge fields in CdTe heterostructures. United States. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4976696
Copy to clipboard
Kuciauskas, Darius, Myers, Thomas H., Barnes, Teresa M., Jensen, Søren A., and Allende Motz, Alyssa M. Mon . "Time-resolved correlative optical microscopy of charge-carrier transport, recombination, and space-charge fields in CdTe heterostructures". United States. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4976696. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1349803.
Copy to clipboard
@article{osti_1349803,
title = {Time-resolved correlative optical microscopy of charge-carrier transport, recombination, and space-charge fields in CdTe heterostructures},
author = {Kuciauskas, Darius and Myers, Thomas H. and Barnes, Teresa M. and Jensen, Søren A. and Allende Motz, Alyssa M.},
abstractNote = {From time- and spatially resolved optical measurements, we show that extended defects can have a large effect on the charge-carrier recombination in II-VI semiconductors. In CdTe double heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy on the InSb (100)-orientation substrates, we characterized the extended defects and found that near stacking faults the space-charge field extends by 2-5 μm. Charge carriers drift (with the space-charge field strength of 730-1,360 V cm-1) and diffuse (with the mobility of 260 ± 30 cm2 V-1 s-1) toward the extended defects, where the minority-carrier lifetime is reduced from 560 ns to 0.25 ns. Furthermore, the extended defects are nonradiative recombination sinks that affect areas significantly larger than the typical crystalline grains in II-VI solar cells. From the correlative time-resolved photoluminescence and second-harmonic generation microscopy data, we developed a band-diagram model that can be used to analyze the impact of extended defects on solar cells and other electronic devices.},
doi = {10.1063/1.4976696},
journal = {Applied Physics Letters},
number = 8,
volume = 110,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Feb 20 00:00:00 EST 2017},
month = {Mon Feb 20 00:00:00 EST 2017}
}
Copy to clipboard
Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4976696
Copyright Statement
Other availability
Search WorldCat Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 17 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science
Save / Share:
Export Metadata
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.

Works referenced in this record:

Electric-field-induced second-harmonic microscopy
journal, December 2003

  • Wu, K.; Canterbury, J. D.; Wilson, P. T.
  • physica status solidi (c), Vol. 0, Issue 8
  • DOI: 10.1002/pssc.200303853

Second-harmonic microscopy of strain fields around through-silicon-vias
journal, April 2016

  • Cho, Yujin; Shafiei, Farbod; Mendoza, B. S.
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 108, Issue 15
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4946773

Observation and first-principles calculation of buried wurtzite phases in zinc-blende CdTe thin films
journal, September 2000

  • Yan, Y.; Al-Jassim, M. M.; Jones, K. M.
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 77, Issue 10
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.1308062

Excitation-dependent recombination and diffusion near an isolated dislocation in GaAs
journal, May 2012

  • Gfroerer, T. H.; Crowley, C. M.; Read, C. M.
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 111, Issue 9
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4709434

Recombination by grain-boundary type in CdTe
journal, July 2015

  • Moseley, John; Metzger, Wyatt K.; Moutinho, Helio R.
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 118, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4926726

Monocrystalline CdTe solar cells with open-circuit voltage over 1 V and efficiency of 17%
journal, May 2016

Grain-Boundary-Enhanced Carrier Collection in CdTe Solar Cells
journal, April 2014

Dislocation-limited performance of advanced solar cells determined by TCAD modeling
journal, December 2016

  • Berney Needleman, David; Wagner, Hannes; Altermatt, Pietro P.
  • Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, Vol. 158
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.solmat.2016.06.031

Surface stability and the selection rules of substrate orientation for optimal growth of epitaxial II-VI semiconductors
journal, October 2015

  • Yin, Wan-Jian; Yang, Ji-Hui; Zaunbrecher, Katherine
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 107, Issue 14
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4932374

Impact of extended defects on recombination in CdTe heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy
journal, August 2016

  • Zaunbrecher, Katherine N.; Kuciauskas, Darius; Swartz, Craig H.
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 109, Issue 9
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4961989

Measuring long-range carrier diffusion across multiple grains in polycrystalline semiconductors by photoluminescence imaging
journal, October 2013

  • Alberi, K.; Fluegel, B.; Moutinho, H.
  • Nature Communications, Vol. 4, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3699

Carrier Decay and Diffusion Dynamics in Single-Crystalline CdTe as Seen via Microphotoluminescence
journal, September 2014

Optically determined minority-carrier transport in GaAs/ Al x Ga 1 − x As heterostructures
journal, June 1993

Analysis of Recombination in CdTe Heterostructures With Time-Resolved Two-Photon Excitation Microscopy
journal, November 2016

  • Kuciauskas, Darius; Wernsing, Keith; Jensen, Soren Alkaersig
  • IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, Vol. 6, Issue 6
  • DOI: 10.1109/JPHOTOV.2016.2600342

Carrier Separation at Dislocation Pairs in CdTe
journal, August 2013

Long carrier lifetimes in large-grain polycrystalline CdTe without CdCl2
journal, June 2016

  • Jensen, S. A.; Burst, J. M.; Duenow, J. N.
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 108, Issue 26
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4954904

Impact of two-photon absorption on second-harmonic generation in CdTe as probed by wavelength-dependent Z-scan nonlinear spectroscopy
journal, January 2013

  • Jang, J. I.; Park, S.; Clark, D. J.
  • Journal of the Optical Society of America B, Vol. 30, Issue 8
  • DOI: 10.1364/JOSAB.30.002292

Mapping electric field distributions in biased organic bulk heterojunctions under illumination by nonlinear optical microscopy
journal, January 2013

  • Morris, J. D.; Atallah, Timothy L.; Lombardo, Christopher J.
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 102, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4788707

CdTe solar cells with open-circuit voltage breaking the 1 V barrier
journal, February 2016

Probing carrier lifetimes at dislocations in epitaxial CdTe
journal, May 2014

  • Alberi, Kirstin; Fluegel, Brian; DiNezza, Michael J.
  • Applied Physics Express, Vol. 7, Issue 6
  • DOI: 10.7567/APEX.7.065503

Charge-carrier transport and recombination in heteroepitaxial CdTe
journal, September 2014

  • Kuciauskas, Darius; Farrell, Stuart; Dippo, Pat
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 116, Issue 12
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4896673

Spatial resolution versus data acquisition efficiency in mapping an inhomogeneous system with species diffusion
journal, June 2015

  • Chen, Fengxiang; Zhang, Yong; Gfroerer, T. H.
  • Scientific Reports, Vol. 5, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/srep10542

Two dimensional numerical simulations of carrier dynamics during time-resolved photoluminescence decays in two-photon microscopy measurements in semiconductors
journal, July 2015

  • Kanevce, Ana; Kuciauskas, Darius; Levi, Dean H.
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 118, Issue 4
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4927299

An extended defect as a sensor for free carrier diffusion in a semiconductor
journal, January 2013

  • Gfroerer, T. H.; Zhang, Yong; Wanlass, M. W.
  • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 102, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4775369

Cathodoluminescence spectrum imaging analysis of CdTe thin-film bevels
journal, September 2016

  • Moseley, John; Al-Jassim, Mowafak M.; Guthrey, Harvey L.
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 120, Issue 10
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4962286

Probing carrier lifetimes in photovoltaic materials using subsurface two-photon microscopy
journal, June 2013

  • Barnard, Edward S.; Hoke, Eric T.; Connor, Stephen T.
  • Scientific Reports, Vol. 3, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/srep02098

Probing surface recombination velocities in semiconductors using two-photon microscopy
journal, March 2016

  • Gaury, Benoit; Haney, Paul M.
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 119, Issue 12
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4944597

Direct imaging of carrier motion in organic transistors by optical second-harmonic generation
journal, October 2007

Beneficial effect of post-deposition treatment in high-efficiency Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells through reduced potential fluctuations
journal, August 2016

  • Jensen, S. A.; Glynn, S.; Kanevce, A.
  • Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 120, Issue 6
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4960344
    Sort by:
    [ × clear filter / sort ]

    Works referencing / citing this record:

    Recombination and bandgap engineering in CdSeTe/CdTe solar cells
    journal, July 2019

    • Zheng, X.; Kuciauskas, D.; Moseley, J.
    • APL Materials, Vol. 7, Issue 7
    • DOI: 10.1063/1.5098459

    Overcoming diffusion-related limitations in semiconductor defect imaging with phonon-plasmon-coupled mode Raman scattering
    journal, June 2018

      Sort by:
      [ × clear filter / sort ]

      Similar Records in DOE PAGES and OSTI.GOV collections: