Measurement of carrier lifetime in micron-scaled materials using resonant microwave circuits

Nat Commun. 2019 Apr 9;10(1):1625. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09602-2.

Abstract

The measurement of minority carrier lifetimes is vital to determining the material quality and operational bandwidth of a broad range of optoelectronic devices. Typically, these measurements are made by recording the temporal decay of a carrier-concentration-dependent material property following pulsed optical excitation. Such approaches require some combination of efficient emission from the material under test, specialized collection optics, large sample areas, spatially uniform excitation, and/or the fabrication of ohmic contacts, depending on the technique used. In contrast, here we introduce a technique that provides electrical readout of minority carrier lifetimes using a passive microwave resonator circuit. We demonstrate >105 improvement in sensitivity, compared with traditional photoemission decay experiments and the ability to measure carrier dynamics in micron-scale volumes, much smaller than is possible with other techniques. The approach presented is applicable to a wide range of 2D, micro-, or nano-scaled materials, as well as weak emitters or non-radiative materials.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.