Measurement of Surface Photovoltage by Atomic Force Microscopy under Pulsed Illumination

Measuring the structure-function relation in photovoltaic materials has been a major drive for atomic force microscopy (AFM) and Kelvin-probe force microscopy (KPFM). The local surface photovoltage (SPV) is measured as the change in contact potential difference (CPD) between the tip and sample upon illumination. The quantities of interest that one will like to correlate with the structure are the decay times of SPV and/or its wavelength dependence. KPFM depends on the tip and sample potential; therefore, SPV is prone to tip changes, rendering an accurate measurement of SPV challenging. We present a measurement technique which allows us to directly measure the difference in the CPD between illuminated and dark states and, thus, SPV as well as the capacitance derivative by using pulsed illumination. The variation of the measured SPV can be minimized due to the time-domain measurement, allowing accurate measurements of the SPV. The increased accuracy enables the systematic comparison of SPV across different measurement setups and excitation conditions (e.g., wavelength dependence and decay time of SPV).