Most AMO Group activities take place in a chemical lab, ARCOLab, and three spectroscopy labs, TRPL-Lab, TA/PEEM Lab & CW Lab. ARCOLab is fully dedicated to the synthesis of materials and the fabrication and testing of perovskite-based devices, whereas our spectroscopy labs are dedicated to steady-state and time-resolved spectroscopies from femtosecond to microsecond time scales, as well as Photo-Emission Electron Microscopy (PEEM). We are in a lively and multidisciplinary Center, which gives us full access to printing tools for device manufacturing, an Electrical Characterization Lab and a Structural and Morphological Characterization lab. As a result, our technical capabilities are as follows:
- Material synthesis and structural and morphological characterization. ARCOLab is equipped with nitrogen and oxygen lines, a fume hood with a Schlenk line and a rotary evaporator, which allows for basic synthesis processes. Within the shared facilities we count with morphology/structure investigating tools such as SEM, AFM, XRD, vibrational spectroscopy set-ups (Raman and IR) and contact angle measurements.
- Advanced Spectroscopy. Our labs feature a variety of light sources and flexible set-ups for the study of the photophysical properties of semiconductors.
-TRPL Lab is dedicated to time-resolved photoluminescence. A tunable ultrafast oscillator (Chameleon, 80 MHz) coupled to an optical parametric oscillator provides excitation from the NIR (950 nm) to UV (350 nm). The resulting photoluminescence can be measured with a time resolution of 1.6 ps in the visible range (Hamamatsu Streak Camera, up to 900 nm), and 1 ns in the IR (TCSPC, up to 1400 nm).
-CW Lab offers a variety of light sources on CW or low repetition rate mode. These can be coupled with flexible photoluminescence lines and integrating spheres to test our materials under varied illumination conditions, or used in connection with a spectrophotometer (200-2500 nm) and a spectrofluorometer (300 nm-1700 nm). Electro-absorption and charge modulation spectroscopy set-ups are also available. Particularly useful for perovskite research is our Photothermal Deflection Spectroscopy (PDS) set-up, to probe weak sub-bandgap absorption up to five orders of magnitude below that at the band-edge.
-TA/PEEM Lab. This lab hosts a femtosecond laser system dedicated to ultrafast time-resolved spectroscopies, including a transient absorption spectrometer, excitation correlation photoluminescence (ECPL) and optical gain measurements. This laser system is coupled with our Photo-Emission Electron Microscope (tr-PEEM). One particular novelty of our time-resolved systems in this lab is the particularly large range of accessible time delays, over 10 orders of magnitude time-delay (10-13–10-3 s).
Our optical labs are equipped with vacuum and cryogenic equipment which allows us to perform experiments in a controlled atmosphere and down to 4 K.
- Fabrication and characterization of perovskite-based devices. ARCOLab is fully equipped to fabricate and characterize solar cells and light-emitting diodes (LED). Starting with an ultrasonic bath, O2 plasma and UV ozone chambers, a spin-coater and hot plates, which allow for a variety of substrate preparation methods, through a Nitrogen filled three-chamber glovebox with a spin coater and hotplates, an organic/inorganic evaporator, a metal evaporator and finishing with an encapsulation process, we are capable of fabrication of devices with different architectures. The laboratory is equipped with a profilometer and an UV-Vis spectrophotometer in order to control immediately the quality of fabricated perovskite films.
Additionally, in ARCOLab we have the equipment necessary to perform a full electrical characterization of solar cells and LEDs. Setup for includes a solar simulator with fully automatic sample holder for 16 substrates, a separate system for EQE measurement and a P&O Maximum Power Point Tracker to perform stability tests in controlled environment and temperature. For LEDs characterization, we built a setup consisting of a two-channel sourcemeter and a spectrometer. We possess also an ageing chamber with controlled atmosphere, illumination and temperature, which allows us to perform degradation tests on the devices.
In addition, we have access to the Electrical Characterization Lab of CNST which is equipped for the full characterization of devices such as transistors and photodetectors.