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Photoluminescence microscopy of optoelectronic materials

Nature Reviews Methods Primers volume 5, Article number: 37 (2025) Cite this article

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Abstract

Photoluminescence (PL) microscopy is a technique for mapping the spatial distribution of optical and electronic properties in optoelectronic (OE) materials, including silicon, III–V and organic semiconductors, halide perovskites and quantum dots. This Primer provides an overview of the foundational principles and methods of PL microscopy, highlighting how different microscopy configurations can reveal unique insights into the photophysical behaviours of OE materials and the importance of selecting appropriate set-ups for accurate analysis. Key topics include acquisition modes such as widefield and confocal scanning, along with time-resolved and spectrally resolved PL techniques. Practical guidance on experimental set-up, data acquisition and analytical approaches is provided, addressing common challenges and limitations. Finally, emerging applications, solutions to typical issues and potential advancements in PL imaging are discussed, with the goal of supporting the optimization of next-generation OE materials and devices.

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Fig. 1: Photoluminescence imaging modes.
Fig. 2: Charge carrier processes in optoelectronic materials at the microscale and the role of the pinhole.
Fig. 3: Elements of steady-state and time-resolved photoluminescence microscopy configurations.
Fig. 4: Acquisition of photoluminescence data cubes.
Fig. 5: Effect of the pinhole on time-resolved photoluminescence data.
Fig. 6: Analysis of photoluminescence data cubes.

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Acknowledgements

Z.W. acknowledges the Leverhulme Trust (Project No. RPG-2021-191). M.D. acknowledges UKRI guarantee funding for Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships 2022 (EP/Y024648/1). C.C. acknowledges the support of a Marshall Scholarship, Winton Scholarship and the Cambridge Trust. S.K. is grateful for funding from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) (91793256) for a short-term research fellowship and from the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship funded by the Leverhulme Trust (ECF-2022-593) and the Isaac Newton Trust (22.08(i)). S.D.S. acknowledges the Royal Society and Tata Group (grant numbers UF150033, URF\R\221026). The authors acknowledge the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/R023980/1) and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (HYPERION, grant agreement no. 756962). The authors thank A. Dearle for the synthesis of MAPbBr3 thin crystals and C. Mamak for her help in developing the code for TRPL acquisition with the emICCD camera. The authors thank L. Hirst and T. Agoro for providing the GaAs wafer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Zimu Wei, Milos Dubajic, Cullen Chosy, Simon Kahmann & Samuel D. Stranks

  2. Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Cullen Chosy & Samuel D. Stranks

  3. Institute of Physics, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany

    Simon Kahmann

Authors
  1. Zimu Wei
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  2. Milos Dubajic
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  3. Cullen Chosy
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  4. Simon Kahmann
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Contributions

Introduction (Z.W.); Experimentation (Z.W., C.C. and M.D.); Results (M.D., C.C. and Z.W.); Applications (Z.W. and C.C.); Reproducibility and data deposition (Z.W.); Limitations and optimizations (Z.W.); Outlook (Z.W., C.C. and M.D.); overview of the Primer (Z.W., C.C., M.D., S.K. and S.D.S.); funding acquisition and supervision (S.D.S.). All authors discussed and edited the full manuscript.

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Correspondence to Samuel D. Stranks.

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Glossary

Airy unit

A unit of measure used in optics, representing the diameter of the central Airy disc in the diffraction pattern produced by a circular aperture.

Auger recombination

A non-radiative process in which the energy released by an electron–hole recombination is transferred to a third charge carrier (electron or hole), which is excited to a higher energy state instead of emitting a photon.

Band-to-band recombination

A radiative process in which an electron in the conduction band directly recombines with a hole in the valence band, emitting a photon.

Beer–Lambert law

A relationship describing the attenuation of light as it passes through a medium; it states that the amount of light absorbed is directly proportional to the concentration of the absorbing species, absorptivity of the species and the path length through the material.

Charge carriers

Particles that carry electric charge and are free to move within a material, such as electrons and holes in semiconductors.

Diffraction limit

The fundamental limit on the resolution of any optical system, defined by the wave nature of light, beyond which two adjacent points can no longer be resolved separately owing to diffraction effects.

Excitons

Bound pairs of an electron and a hole, held together by Coulomb attraction; they are electrically neutral quasiparticles that can transfer energy without transporting net electric charge.

Fick’s law

A principle describing diffusion, stating that the speed of particles moving from areas of high to low concentration is proportional to their concentration gradient, via the diffusion coefficient.

Fluence

Energy per unit area (J cm−²) delivered in a single laser pulse.

Fluorescence

A specific type of photoluminescence where the excited electron returns to the ground state without changing its spin, leading to a very fast emission process (typically within nanoseconds).

Intensified gated cameras

An imaging device equipped with an image intensifier and electronic gating, allowing it to capture ultrafast, low-light events by selectively detecting light within precise time windows.

Moiré patterns

Large-scale interference patterns that appear when superposing patterned objects (either in space or in time) with a slight difference in period; they could appear as artefacts in fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopic images, owing to mismatch between the pulse repetition rate and the pixel dwell time.

Numerical aperture

(NA). A dimensionless number that characterizes the light acceptance cone of a lens or, equivalently, the range of emission angles of a source; higher NA values indicate better spatial resolution as more light can be collected with the microscopy system.

Operando

Describes a way of implementing a technique to study a system under its real operational conditions, typically while it is functioning in situ.

Optoelectronic

Describes materials such as silicon, III–V semiconductors, metal oxides and halide perovskites that interact with light and electrical charges, often used in devices that convert electrical signals into optical signals or vice versa.

Quasi-Fermi level splitting

The energy difference between the electron and hole quasi-Fermi levels in a semiconductor under non-equilibrium conditions.

Shockley–Read–Hall recombination

A non-radiative process in semiconductors in which electrons and holes recombine through localized energy states (also called traps) within the bandgap, leading to energy loss as heat rather than light.

Steady-state

A condition in which the properties of the system remain constant over the observation time.

Stokes shift

The difference in wavelength (or energy) between the maxima of the absorption and emission spectra of the same electronic transition.

Super-Gaussian

A generalized form of a Gaussian function with a flatter top and steeper sides, often used to model beam profiles or spatial intensity distributions that deviate from a standard Gaussian shape.

Urbach energy

A parameter that quantifies the width of the exponential tail of the absorption edge in a semiconductor, reflecting the degree of structural or thermal disorder in the material.

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Wei, Z., Dubajic, M., Chosy, C. et al. Photoluminescence microscopy of optoelectronic materials. Nat Rev Methods Primers 5, 37 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43586-025-00407-w

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