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Nanometric Chemical Analysis of Beam-Sensitive Materials: A Case Study of STEM-EDX on Perovskite Solar Cells.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

Kosasih, Felix Utama  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1060-4003
Cacovich, Stefania 

Abstract

Quantitative chemical analysis on the nanoscale provides valuable information on materials and devices which can be used to guide further improvements to their performance. In particular, emerging families of technologically relevant composite materials such as organic-inorganic hybrid halide perovskites and metal-organic frameworks stand to benefit greatly from such characterization. However, these nanocomposites are also vulnerable to damage induced by analytical probes such as electron, X-ray, or neutron beams. Here the effect of electrons on a model hybrid halide perovskite is investigated, focusing on the acquisition parameters appropriate for energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy in a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM-EDX). The acquisition parameters are systematically varied to examine the relationship between electron dose, data quality, and beam damage. Five metrics are outlined to assess the quality of STEM-EDX data and severity of beam damage, further validated by dark field STEM imaging. Loss of iodine through vacancy creation is found to be the primary manifestation of electron beam damage in the perovskite specimen, and iodine content is seen to decrease exponentially with electron dose. This work demonstrates data acquisition and analysis strategies that can be used for studying electron beam damage and for achieving reliable quantification for a broad range of beam-sensitive materials.

Description

Keywords

energy materials, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, microscopy and imaging methods, perovskite solar cells, transmission electron microscopy

Journal Title

Small Methods

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2366-9608
2366-9608

Volume Title

5

Publisher

Wiley
Sponsorship
European Commission Horizon 2020 (H2020) Research Infrastructures (RI) (823717)