Strong polarisation-induced electric fields in C-plane oriented nitrides semiconductor layers reduce the performance of devices. Eliminating the polarization fields can be achieved by growing nitrides along non polar direction. We have grown non polar A-plane oriented InN on R-plane (1‾102) nitridated sapphire substrate by MOCVD. We have studied the structural anisotropy observed in these layers by analyzing High Resolution XRay Diffraction rocking curve (RC) experiments as a function of the in-plane beam orientation. A-plane InN epilayer have a unique epitaxial relationship on R-Plane sapphire and show a strong structural anisotropy. Full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the InN(11‾20) XRD RC values are contained between 44 and 81 Arcmin. FWHM is smaller when the diffraction occurs along the [0001] and the largest FWHM values, of the (11‾20) RC, are obtained when the diffraction occurs along the [1‾100] in-plane direction. Atomic Force Microscopy imaging revealed morphologies with well organized crystallites. The grains are structured along a unique crystallographic orientation of InN, leading to larger domains in this direction. This structural anisotropy can be, in first approximation, attributed to the difference in the domain sizes observed. XRD reciprocal space mappings (RSM) were performed in asymmetrical configuration on (13‾40) and (2‾202) diffraction plane. RSM are measured with a beam orientation corresponding to a maximal and a minimal width of the (11‾20) Rocking curves, respectively. A simple theoretical model is exposed to interpret the RSM. We concluded that the dominant contribution to the anisotropy is due to the scattering coherence length anisotropy present in our samples. © (2015) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

Copper Indium Gallium deSelenide (Cu(In,Ga)Se2, CIGS) is a promising material for cost-efficient solar cells. Efficiencies above 20% have already been demonstrated in laboratory, and large area CIGS solar panels are already on the market. However, it is still an interesting issue to find efficient characterization techniques that can be used to validate the quality of the different layers at any step of the process, without having to process a complete cell and measure its electrical properties. In this work, we have deposited CIGS onto Mo coated soda lime glass by co-evaporation, using the so-called three step deposition process. Then, photoluminescence (PL) measurements were made on the samples, in the range of 10K to the room temperature, and the excitation intensity was varied in a very large range, in order to reach non-linear regime. We report the first observation of stimulated emission in mechanisms are discussed. The threshold at which sample photoluminescence changes from spontaneous to stimulated is well known to be sensitive to overall sample quality, and we propose to use this measurement as a probing tool for sample quality. This opens an interesting perspective for characterization of CIGS during solar cell processing. © (2015) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).

Light scattering spectroscopy, mainly developed for Cu(In,Ga)Se2 thin films growth, has been demonstrated to be an efficient in-situ monitoring tool. It consists of illuminating the substrate surface using a light source and collecting the diffused light with a spectrometer. The on-line information allows monitoring the point of stoichiometry of the grown layer. In this work, we propose an alternative approach of this method, replacing the spectrometer by a standard webcam. This system allows to precisely choose the analyzed area on the substrate surface, which may be the whole sample surface or just a specific zone. We have grown CuInSe2 (CIS) thin films by co-evaporation under vacuum using the three-stage process. We have simultaneously performed CIS growth on both Mo-coated and bare glass substrates within the same growth run, while, on purpose, the scattered light was collected from the Mo-coated substrate. The CIS thin films were characterized by X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, Hall effect measurements, absorption spectroscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy for composition. By interrupting the CIS growth at different stages of the growth process, we have correlated the scattered light features with the Cu-rich/In-rich transitions and we observe the reproducibility of the scattered light spectra structures.

Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) is a vapor phase thin film deposi- tion technique, performed at low substrate temperatures, which enables the deposition of extremely uniform thin films. This technique is scalable up to very large substrates, making it very interesting for industrial applications. On the other hand, ZnO, both undoped and aluminum doped is commonly used as a transparent electrode in solar cells based on Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 (CIGS), and is usually deposited by Physical Vapor Deposition techniques. In this paper, we investigate the potential of ALD for the deposition of ZnO windows for solar cell applications. Thin films of a few hundreds of nanometers were grown by ALD, both undoped and doped with aluminum. They were studied by X-ray diffraction, electrical trans- port measurements, Atomic Force Microscopy and transmittance experiments.

We report on the electrodeposition of ZnO with different surface morphologies. We demonstrate by three different ways that morphology is ruled by the growth rate, and therefore strongly influences the optical properties of the layers. Whereas small size well-connected grains are obtained at high growth rate, the crystals evolve toward large disoriented nanorods since the kinetic of the reaction is hindered. The corresponding RMS roughnesses ranges from 35nm to 119nm, resulting in diffusion of the light from far UV to visible-wavelength. The surface morphology is shown to be directly mastered by electrochemical parameters which enable either a 2D or 3D growth mechanism.

CdS thin films were grown on different substrates (glass, GaAs, Si, Al2O3) by CBD. The rms roughness of the CdS layers, measured on AFM pictures, ranges from 11 to 95 nm depending on the chemical nature of the substrate Thermal annealing of the samples leads to an improvement of the CdS crystalline quality with a conversion from cubic to hexagonal phase, whatever substrate is used, as assessed by XRD. Thermal annealing also improves the optical properties. While as-grown CdS layers photoluminescence is due to defect related emission around 1.7eV, annealed samples show dominant near band edge photoluminescence emission around 2.4 e V.

Using the electron emission channeling and Rutherford backscattering/channeling techniques, the influence of the mosaicity of a thin film on the axial channeling of charged particles was investigated. It is found that crystal mosaicity leads to a broadening and a degradation of the experimental channeling effects. This phenomenon, which is shown to be of major importance when assessing the lattice site of impurities in a single crystal, can be modeled quantitatively by using the mosaic tilt and twist components derived from X-ray rocking curve scans. As a case study, we illustrate that our approach allows to accurately determine the lattice site of Er in AlN, despite the significant influence of mosaicity on the channeling measurements.