Investigation of surface recombination processes of semiconducting materials using ultrafast laser assisted Atom Probe Tomography

Abstract

Ultrafast laser assisted atom probe tomography (LA-APT) is a powerful nano analysing instrument that provides 3D maps of the chemical distribution in small volumes of either metallic and semiconducting materials or even high-K oxides with a sub nanometre spatial resolution. Despite that these materials are key resources for the future in microand nano-electronics and optoelectronics (e.g. within photovoltaic devices) only a few works exist on the surface recombination processes under high electric field. Since a high electric field is always applied to the sample analyzed by LA-APT such technique appears as one of the most promising tools for the investigation of the charge recombination process.