In the article cited below Katherine Atamanuk, Justin Luria and Bryan D. Huey present “a new approach for directly mapping VOC (open-circuit voltage) with nanoscale resolution, requiring a single, standard-speed AFM scan. This leverages the concept of the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) feedback loop that underpins nearly all AFM topography imaging.”*
NanoWorld™ Pointprobe® CDT-NCHR conductive diamond coated silicon AFM probes were used in the described CT-AFM experiment.
“Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) is an inexpensive thin-film photovoltaic with ca. 5% of the 2017 global market share for solar cells. To optimize the efficiency and reliability of these, or any electronic devices, a thorough understanding of their composition, microstructure, and performance is necessary as a function of device design, processing, and in-service conditions. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been a valuable tool for such characterization, especially of materials properties and device performance at the nanoscale. In the case of thin-film solar cells, local photovoltaic (PV) properties such as the open-circuit voltage, photocurrent, and work function have been demonstrated to vary by an order of magnitude, or more, within tens of nanometers […] Recently, property mapping with high spatial resolution by AFM has been further combined with the ability to serially mill a surface, in order to reveal underlying surface structures and uniquely develop three-dimensional (3D) nanoscale property maps. The most notable examples are based on pure current detection with the AFM to resolve conduction pathways in filamentary semiconducting devices and interconnects […], and tomographic AFM of photocurrents in polycrystalline solar cells during in situ illumination […].”*
*Katherine Atamanuk, Justin Luria, Bryan D. Huey
Direct AFM-based nanoscale mapping and tomography of open-circuit voltages for photovoltaics
Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology 2018, 9, 1802–1808.
doi: 10.3762/bjnano.9.171
The article cited above is part of the Thematic Series “Scanning probe microscopy for energy-related materials”.
Please follow this external link for the full article: https://www.beilstein-journals.org/bjnano/articles/9/171
The article “Direct AFM-based nanoscale mapping and tomography of open-circuit voltages for photovoltaics” by Atamanuk et. al is an Open Access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.