Coupling GD-OES and XPS profiling to perform advanced physico-chemical characterizations of III-V layers for photovoltaic applications

III-V solar cells are good candidates to be used in multi-junction solar cells. The interfaces control in these stacks is very important and requires advanced characterization tools. We develop a specific methodology to address this issue by coupling characterization methods based on GD-OES profiling and XPS chemical characterization. Thanks to the rapidity and the semi quantitative chemical analysis offered by the GD-OES profiling, interfaces can be reached easily and precisely enabling the successive XPS analysis inside the GD-OES crater in order to obtain an accurate local physico-chemical analysis. However, the perturbation level at the surface of the GD-OES crater bottom is an important parameter to evaluate in order to assure the reliability of XPS experiments. This work presents the study of this coupling method in the case of GaAs and GaP III-V reference layers. Capabilities of the analytic coupling are evaluated for such III-V layers and different chemical treatments to restore the surface of the materials before the XPS characterization are presented.