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Updated: Jul 16, 2026

Atom Probe Tomography Studies on the Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Grain Boundaries
Published on: April 22, 2013
Grain-boundary physics in polycrystalline CuInSe2 revisited: experiment and theory
Yanfa Yan1, R Noufi, M M Al-Jassim
1National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, Colorado 80401, USA.
Abstract:
Current studies have attributed the remarkable performance of polycrystalline CuInSe2 (CIS) to anomalous grain-boundary (GB) physics in CIS. The recent theory predicts that GBs in CIS are hole barriers, which prevent GB electrons from recombining. We examine the atomic structure and chemical composition of (112) GBs in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) using high-resolution Z-contrast imaging and nanoprobe x-ray energy-dispersive spectroscopy. We show that the theoretically predicted Cu-vacancy rows are not observed in (112) GBs in CIGS. Our first-principles modeling further reveals that the (112) GBs in CIS do not act as hole barriers. Our results suggest that the superior performance of polycrystalline CIS should not be explained solely by the GB behaviors.
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