Useong Kim

High Mobility in a Stable Transparent Perovskite Oxide

We discovered that La-doped BaSnO3 with the perovskite structure has an unprecedentedly high mobility at room temperature while retaining its optical transparency. In single crystals, the mobility reached 320 cm2 V-1 s-1 at a doping level of 8×1019 cm-3, constituting the highest value among wide-band-gap semiconductors. In epitaxial films, the maximum mobility was 70 cm2 V-1 s-1 at a doping level of 4.4×1020 cm-3. We also show that resistance of (Ba,La)SnO3 changes little even after a thermal cycle to 530 °C in air, pointing to an unusual stability of oxygen atoms and great potential for realizing transparent high-frequency, high-power functional devices.

Physical properties of transparent perovskite oxides (Ba,La)SnO3with high electrical mobility at room temperature

Transparent electronic materials are increasingly in demand for a variety of optoelectronic applications. BaSnO3 is a semiconducting oxide with a large band gap of more than 3.1 eV. Recently, we discovered that La doped BaSnO3 exhibits unusually high electrical mobility of 320 cm^2(Vs)^-1 at room temperature and superior thermal stability at high temperatures [H. J. Kim et al. Appl. Phys. Express. 5, 061102 (2012)]. Following that work, we report various physical properties of (Ba,La)SnO3 single crystals and films including temperature-dependent transport and phonon properties, optical properties and first-principles calculations. We find that almost doping-independent mobility of 200-300 cm^2(Vs)^-1 is realized in the single crystals in a broad doping range from 1.0x10^19 to 4.0x10^20 cm^-3. Moreover, the conductivity of ~10^4 ohm^-1cm^-1 reached at the latter carrier density is comparable to the highest value. We attribute the high mobility to several physical properties of (Ba,La)SnO3: a small effective mass coming from the ideal Sn-O-Sn bonding, small disorder effects due to the doping away from the SnO2 conduction channel, and reduced carrier scattering due to the high dielectric constant. The observation of a reduced mobility of ~70 cm^2(Vs)^-1 in the film is mainly attributed to additional carrier-scatterings which are presumably created by the lattice mismatch between the substrate SrTiO3 and (Ba,La)SnO3. The main optical gap of (Ba,La)SnO3 single crystals remained at about 3.33 eV and the in-gap states only slightly increased, thus maintaining optical transparency in the visible region. Based on these, we suggest that the doped BaSnO3 system holds great potential for realizing all perovskite-based, transparent high-frequency high-power functional devices as well as highly mobile two-dimensional electron gas via interface control of heterostructured films.

Large effects of dislocations on high mobility of epitaxial perovskite Ba0.96La0.04SnO3 films

We studied the relationship between the mobility and dislocation density for recently discovered high-mobility Ba0.96La0.04SnO3 thin-films and found that the carrier density and mobility of the film, as high as 4.0×1020 cm−3 and 70 cm2 V−1s−1, respectively, decreased as the dislocation density increased. We determined the values for dislocation density using transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy after surface etching. We found that the effect of dislocations on the mobility was large, when compared with that for GaN with a similar dislocation density. The importance of dislocation scattering in the perovskite structure is emphasized, especially in a low-carrier-density regime.

Dopant-site-dependent scattering by dislocations in epitaxial films of perovskite semiconductor BaSnO3

We studied the conduction mechanism in Sb-doped BaSnO3 epitaxial films, and compared its behavior with that of the mechanism of its counterpart, La-doped BaSnO3. We found that the electron mobility in BaSnO3 films was reduced by almost 7 times when the dopant was changed from La to Sb, despite little change in the effective mass of the carriers. This indicates that the scattering rate of conduction electrons in the BaSnO3 system is strongly affected by the site at which the dopants are located. More importantly, we found that electron scattering by threading dislocations also depends critically on the dopant site. We propose that the large enhancement of scattering by the threading dislocations in Sb-doped BaSnO3 films is caused by the combination effect of the change in the distribution of Sb impurities in the films, the formation of the Sb impurity clusters near the threading dislocations, and the conduction electron clustering near the Sb impurities.

All-perovskite transparent high mobility field effect using epitaxial BaSnO3 and LaInO3

We demonstrate an all-perovskite transparent heterojunction field effect transistor made of two lattice-matched perovskite oxides: BaSnO3 and LaInO3. We have developed epitaxial LaInO3 as the gate oxide on top of BaSnO3, which were recently reported to possess high thermal stability and electron mobility when doped with La. We measured the dielectric properties of the epitaxial LaInO3 films, such as the band gap, dielectric constant, and the dielectric breakdown field. Using the LaInO3 as a gate dielectric and the La-doped BaSnO3 as a channel layer, we fabricated field effect device structure. The field effect mobility of such device was higher than 90 cm2 V−1 s−1, the on/off ratio was larger than 107, and the subthreshold swing was 0.65 V dec−1. We discuss the possible origins for such device performance and the future directions for further improvement.

High-mobility BaSnO3 thin-film transistor with HfO2 gate insulator

Thin-film transistors have been fabricated using La-doped BaSnO3 as n-type channels and (In,Sn)2O3 as source, drain, and gate electrodes. HfO2 was grown as gate insulators by atomic layer deposition. The field-effect mobility, Ion/Ioff ratio, and subthreshold swing of the device are 24.9 cm2 V−1 s−1, 6.0 × 106, and 0.42 V dec−1, respectively. The interface trap density, evaluated to be higher than 1013 cm−2 eV−1, was found to be slightly lower than that of the thin-film transistor with an Al2O3 gate insulator. We attribute the much smaller subthreshold swing values to the higher dielectric constant of HfO2.

Thermally stable pn-junctions based on a single transparent perovskite semiconductor BaSnO3

We report p-doping of the BaSnO3 (BSO) by replacing Ba with K. The activation energy of K-dopants is estimated to be about 0.5 eV. We have fabricated pn junctions by using K-doped BSO as a p-type and La-doped BSO as an n-type semiconductor. I-V characteristics of these devices exhibit an ideal rectifying behavior of pn junctions with the ideality factor between 1 and 2, implying high integrity of the BSO materials. Moreover, the junction properties are found to be very stable after repeated high-bias and high-temperature thermal cycling, demonstrating a large potential for optoelectronic functions.

Photoconductivity of transparent perovskite semiconductor BaSnO3 and SrTiO3 epitaxial thin films

We measured the photoconductivity of transparent semiconductor BaSnO3 and compared it with that of SrTiO3. Epitaxial BaSnO3 and SrTiO3 films were grown on MgO substrates to exclude any contribution to photoconductivity from the substrate due to its large bandgap. In spite of the same perovskite structure and similar bandgap sizes (3.1–3.2 eV), the photoconductive behaviors of the two materials are quite different in terms of their magnitude and time dependence. The photoconductivity of BaSnO3 persists for many hours after removal from light exposure, whereas the photoconductivity of SrTiO3 shows little persistent conductivity. In addition, the photoconductivity of BaSnO3 increases to a value over 25 times higher than that of SrTiO3, after 3 h of illuminations. The spectral photoconductive responses of both BaSnO3 and SrTiO3 show their highest peaks below 400 nm, suggesting that the electron-hole pair generation is the main mechanism of the photoconductivity for the both materials. The large persistent pho...

Conducting interface states at LaInO3/BaSnO3 polar interface controlled by Fermi level

We report on a new polar interface state between two band insulators: LaInO3 and BaSnO3, where the sheet conductance enhancement in the interface reaches more than the factor of 104 depending on the La doping concentration in BaSnO3 layer, by monitoring the conductance change before and after the polar interface formation as a function of La doping in BaSnO3. By eliminating the possibilities of oxygen vacancy involvement and cation diffusion, we show that the conductance enhancement is due to electronic reconstruction in the interface. Furthermore, we have found that the interfaces between BaSnO3 and the larger bandgap non-polar perovskites BaHfO3 and SrZrO3 did not show such a conductance enhancement. We discuss a model for the interface state where the Fermi level plays a critical role and the conductance enhancement is due to the existence of polarization in the polar perovskite, LaInO3.

High-k perovskite gate oxide BaHfO3

We have investigated epitaxial BaHfO3 as a high-k perovskite dielectric. From x-ray diffraction measurement, we confirmed the epitaxial growth of BaHfO3 on BaSnO3 and MgO. We measured optical and dielectric properties of the BaHfO3 gate insulator; the optical bandgap, the dielectric constant, and the breakdown field. Furthermore, we fabricated a perovskite heterostructure field effect transistor using epitaxial BaHfO3 as a gate insulator and La-doped BaSnO3 as a channel layer on SrTiO3 substrate. To reduce the threading dislocations and enhance the electrical properties of the channel, an undoped BaSnO3 buffer layer was grown on SrTiO3 substrates before the channel layer deposition. The device exhibited a field effect mobility value of 52.7 cm2 V−1 s−1, a Ion/Ioff ratio higher than 107, and a subthreshold swing value of 0.80 V dec−1. We compare the device performances with those of other field effect transistors based on BaSnO3 channels and different gate oxides.