Abstract: Probing Energy Materials with Electrons

Over the last several decades efforts to reduce global dependency on fossil fuels has led to the development of novel materials and devices capable of harvesting and storing energy from renewable sources. The performance of these devices is governed by the intimate connection between their structural, chemical, and optoelectronic properties. Ultimately, device performance is defined by the movement of charge carriers. Optimizing performance relies on monitoring these properties to understand how they affect charge carriers so that new device architectures and material processing conditions can be developed to improve efficiencies and long-term operational stability. The relevant length scale of features of interest ranges from centimeters to angstroms. The ability to probe structure, chemistry, and optoelectronic properties over this length scale make electron microscopy-based characterization techniques ideal for studying renewable energy materials and devices. This presentation will introduce the scanning electron microscope (SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM) platforms as well as some of the commonly used characterization techniques and how they can be combined to provide more complete picture of factors that limit performance of photovoltaic devices.

Bio:

Dr. Harvey Guthrey is currently a research scientist in the Analytical Microscopy and Imaging Group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. He received his Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of North Texas in 2008 and his PhD in Materials Science from the Colorado School of Mines in 2013. His research is focused on applying electron microscopy-based characterization techniques to materials and devices with renewable energy applications. Dr. Guthrey's research interests include development of novel measurement techniques within the scanning electron microscope (SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM) platforms to study charge carrier recombination in photovoltaic materials and devices and implementing multi-scale multi-technique correlative characterization approaches to gain thorough understanding of factors that limit device performance.