Raman Spectroscopy at The Nanoscale: From Materials to Devices for Energy Conversion

The pace at which major technological changes take place is often dictated by the rate at which new materials are discovered, and the timely arrival of new materials has always played a key role in bringing advances to our society. Machine learning and advanced simulation and modeling techniques have recently massively accelerated the fast screening and discovery of new materials. There is however today a bottleneck in the exploitation of these emerging materials. Indeed, after the materials’ existence and/or properties are predicted in silico, their synthesis and integration in devices to demonstrate functionality remain major challenge. Fast and reliable characterization can significantly accelerate materials optimization and bring them to the forefront of applications.<br/><br/>This talk will give an overview on the key role that Raman spectroscopy plays in accelerated semiconductor materials development for optoelectronic and energy conversion applications. I will show how Raman spectroscopy could be effectively used for probing fundamental properties of materials, such as crystal quality, phase purity, and defects. This will follow with presenting Raman-based methodologies for nanoscale detection of defects and impurities in materials, leading to establishing accurate phase diagrams and predictive synthesis-structure-property relationships. I will focus on wide range of material systems, from thin films to 1D and 2D materials. Finally I will discuss Raman-based mapping of the defect structure/space of thin film solar cells to optimize device structure.