Electron beam induced current technique using a scanning Auger microprobe

Abstract

A scanning Auger microprobe (SAM) has been modified to detect and process electron beam induced currents (EBIC). The EBIC mode is incorporated as an integral part of the analytical instrument and operates in conjunction with secondary electron detection (SED) and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) modes. A minicomputer scans the electron beam and acquires the EBIC data. Using the built-in software designed for Auger data analysis, the data are processed, displayed on a graphics terminal, and plotted on a graphics plotter. The technique has been applied to the study of a grain boundary region of a polycrystalline Si solar cell by extracting a noise-free signal and obtaining cell parameters such as diffusion length and surface recombination velocity in the vicinity of the grain boundary has been demonstrated.