Damon first joined the Rockett Group in 2002 as a graduate student.  He initially worked on deposition of CuInSe2 thin films using the group’s unique hybrid sputtering and evaporation process.  He used characterization techniques such as SEM, profilometry and SIMS to study the material.  In 2005, after having fabricated the world’s first isolated CuInSe2 grain boundary for study in epitaxial material (with the help of co-worker Allen Hall), Damon conducted a short-lived TEM experiment on CuInSe2 grain boundaries. More recently, his work has focused on electrical and optical properties of the thin film solar cell absorber material and the grain boundaries therein.

The electrical work involved the resurrection and modernization of a defunct low temperature Hall effect machine left to the group.  The machine has been successful in characterizing materials that are moderately resistive.  It is able to measure resistivity, Hall coefficient and I-V curves down to approximately 20 K, with a minimum current of 0.1 nA and a maximum voltage of 2V.  Since early 2006, the Rockett group has been collaborating with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on a project to fabricate contacts to CdGeAs2, a potential material for high energy radiation detectors.  Damon and co-worker Angel Aquino have made electrical and optical measurements on the CdGeAs2 for PNNL as well.

The optical work includes spectrophotometry, photoluminescence (PL) and cathodoluminescence (CL) – techniques that shed light on defects and recombination in CuInSe2 and related materials.  In October 2006, Damon visited the Hahn Meitner Institute in Berlin for five weeks to work with Susanne Siebentritt’s heterogeneous PV materials group.  There he completed a project on symmetry of native defects in the tetragonal semiconductor CuGaSe2, a polarization-dependent PL study.  Earlier that year, Damon visited Len Brillson’s group at the Ohio State University to work on low temperature CL of epitaxial and polycrystalline CuInSe2.  Damon is currently working with Julio Soares and ECE professor Stephen Bishop in the MRL’s Laser and Spectroscopy Facility on a PL excitation experiment.  Here the group will tune the PL excitation wavelength in order to probe specific transitions within the bandgap.

Publications