High-resolution Scanning Transmission EBIC Analysis of Misfit Dislocations at Perovskite pn-Heterojunctions

Abstract Fundamental losses of photovoltaic energy conversion are transmission of sub band gap photons and thermalisation which are the underlying physics of the Shockley-Queisser limit defining maximum conversion efficiency of single-junction solar cells. Strongly correlated materials such as perovskites are promising candidates to exceed this limit by exploiting (i) long wavelength light absorption and (ii) the existence of long-living intraband excitations indicating that harvesting hot excess carriers might be feasible in such systems. In this work, we study pn-heterojunctions produced from Pr1-xCaxMnO3 on SrTi1-yNbyO3 by means of microscopic techniques. Such systems exhibit relevant quantities such as space charge layer width, screening lengths and excess carrier diffusion lengths in the 1-10 nm range which makes the use of standard methods such as electron beam induced current a challenging task. We report scanning transmission electron beam induced current experiments of misfit dislocations at the heterojunction. The dislocation-induced reduction of the charge collection is studied with nanometer spatial resolution. Effects of surface recombination and the heterojunction electric field are discussed.