A preliminary study of CdS for solar cells using combined TEM and cathodoluminescence

A study of the suitability of a combined transmission electron microscope (TEM)/cathodoluminescence (CL) imaging and spectroscopy apparatus for investigations of CdS is presented. Photoluminescence (PL) was used to evaluate the effect of the Ar+ and I+ ion beam thinning used in TEM specimen preparation of CdS: a minor increase in yellow emission (594 nm) resulted. However, excitation of luminescence spectra in the TEM had a quenching effect on red luminescence (734 nm), this being considered due to the high excitation density compared to that in PL.Significant electron beam damage to the CdS could be avoided by using scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) illumination in preference to the conventional TEM mode, which generally uses higher beam current density. Dislocation images were correlated with contrast in the STEM-CL imaging mode. The potential of the apparatus to make further direct correlations of CL images with diffraction contrast TEM imaging was assessed using the Rose visibility criterion.