Cathodoluminescence guided site-specific selection for scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and CL analysis in CdSeTe/CdTe solar cells

Increases in solar cell conversion efficiency can be linked to improvements in device microstructure Characterization is key to making these improvements and information across the length scales from the micron scale to atomic scale is needed. To maximize the combined advantages of SEM, EBSD, EDX, CL, STEM, STEM-EDX, and STEM-CL, an efficient workflow is essential for preparing samples from microstructural features of interest identified initially by SEM at the micron scale for detailed analysis in TEM down to the atomic scale. In this work, we present an efficient focused ion beam (FIB) lift-out workflow that enables the preparation of TEM samples from site-specific photoactive areas identified using cathodoluminescence. This workflow enables significant time savings and precision in correlation between data sets.<p></p>