Limitations of In2O3 as a transparent conducting oxide

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Issue Date
2019-08-23Author
Peelaers, Hartwin
Kioupakis, E.
Van de Walle, C. G.
Publisher
American Institute of Physics
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Rights
© 2019 Author(s). Published under license by AIP Publishing.
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Sn-doped In2O3 or ITO is the most widely used transparent conducting oxide. We use first-principles calculations to investigate the limitations to its transparency due to free-carrier absorption mediated by phonons or charged defects. We find that the main contribution to the phonon-assisted indirect absorption is due to emission (as opposed to absorption) of phonons, which explains why the process is relatively insensitive to temperature. The wavelength dependence of this indirect absorption process can be described by a power law. Indirect absorption mediated by charged defects or impurities is also unavoidable since doping is required to obtain conductivity. At high carrier concentrations, screening by the free carriers becomes important. We find that charged-impurity-assisted absorption becomes larger than phonon-assisted absorption for impurity concentrations above 1020 cm–3. The differences in the photon-energy dependence of the two processes can be explained by band structure effects.
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This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in Appl. Phys. Lett. 115, 082105 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5109569 and may be found at https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.5109569.
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Citation
H. Peelaers, E. Kioupakis, and C. G. Van de Walle , "Limitations of In2O3 as a transparent conducting oxide", Applied Physics Letters 115, 082105 (2019) https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5109569
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