Novel Iron-based ternary amorphous oxide semiconductor with very high transparency, electronic conductivity, and mobility

Here we report that ternary metal oxides of type (Me)2O3 with the primary metal (Me) constituent being Fe (66 atomic (at.) %) along with the two Lanthanide elements Tb (10 at.%) and Dy (24 at.%) can show excellent semiconducting transport properties. Thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition at room temperature followed by ambient oxidation showed very high electronic conductivity (>5 × 104 S/m) and Hall mobility (>30 cm2/V-s). These films had an amorphous microstructure which was stable to at least 500 °C and large optical transparency with a direct band gap of 2.85 ± 0.14 eV. This material shows emergent semiconducting behavior with significantly higher conductivity and mobility than the constituent insulating oxides. Since these results demonstrate a new way to modify the behaviors of transition metal oxides made from unfilled d- and/or f-subshells, a new class of functional transparent conducting oxide materials could be envisioned.

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