Detecting driving potentials at the buried SiO 2 nanolayers in solar cells by chemical-selective nonlinear x-ray spectroscopy
We present an approach to selectively examine an asymmetric potential in the buried layer of solar cell devices by means of nonlinear x-ray spectroscopy. Detecting second harmonic generation signals while resonant to the SiO 2 core level, we directly observe existence of the band bending effect in the SiO 2 nanolayer, buried in the heterostructures of Al/LiF/SiO 2 /Si, TiO 2 /SiO 2 /Si, and Al 2 O 3 /SiO 2 /Si. Furthermore, the results demonstrate high sensitivity of the method to the asymmetric potential that determines performance of functional materials for photovoltaics or other optoelectronic devices.