Here we demonstrate, for the first time experimentally, a nanopipette action for metals using multiwalled carbon nanotubes. The process relies on electromigration forces, created at high electron current densities, enabling the transport of material inside the hollow core of carbon nanotubes. In this way nanoparticles of iron were transported to and from electrically conducting substrates.
III-V solar cells in the nanowire geometry might hold significant synthesis-cost and device-design advantages as compared to thin films and have shown impressive performance improvements in recent years. To continue this development there is a need for characterization techniques giving quick and reliable feedback for growth development. Further, characterization techniques which can improve understanding of the link between nanowire growth conditions, subsequent processing, and solar cell performance are desired. Here, we present the use of a nanoprobe system inside a scanning electron microscope to efficiently contact single nanowires and characterize them in terms of key parameters for solar cell performance. Specifically, we study single as-grown InP nanowires and use electron beam induced current characterization to understand the charge carrier collection properties, and dark current-voltage characteristics to understand the diode recombination characteristics. By correlating the single nanowire measurements to performance of fully processed nanowire array solar cells, we identify how the performance limiting parameters are related to growth and/or processing conditions. We use this understanding to achieve a more than 7-fold improvement in efficiency of our InP nanowire solar cells, grown from a different seed particle pattern than previously reported from our group. The best cell shows a certified efficiency of 15.0%; the highest reported value for a bottom-up synthesized InP nanowire solar cell. We believe the presented approach have significant potential to speed-up the development of nanowire solar cells, as well as other nanowire-based electronic/optoelectronic devices.
A scanning tunneling microscope ͑STM͒ with a compact, three-dimensional, inertial slider design is presented. Inertial sliding of the STM tip, in three dimensions, enables coarse motion and scanning using only one piezoelectric tube. Using the same electronics both for scanning and inertial sliding, step lengths of less than 5% of the piezo range were achieved. The compact design, less than 1 cm 3 in volume, ensures a low mechanical noise level and enables us to fit the STM into the sample holder of a transmission electron microscope ͑TEM͒, while maintaining atomic scale resolution in both STM and TEM imaging.
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