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Electron transport in semiconducting SnO2: Intentional bulk donors and acceptors, the interface, and the surface

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An Erratum to this article was published on 01 October 2012

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Abstract

The transport properties of doped and undoped, high quality, plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy grown tin dioxide (SnO2) thin films are reviewed. Intentional doping can vary the SnO2 resistivity over more than seven orders of magnitude from a transparent conducting oxide-like conductivity up to the semi-insulating range. A region of high unintentional n-type conductivity was identified in the substrate interface region and had to be accounted for. Sb was a well-behaved shallow donor up to the regime of conducting oxides. In and Ga were too deep acceptors to achieve p-type conductivity but were suitable to render SnO2 semi-insulating. While the surface accumulation layer strongly influenced contact properties, its conductance was negligible. The methodology used here for studying the transport can also be applied to other semiconducting oxides.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Paul-Drude-Institut für Festkörperelektronik, D-10117, Berlin, Germany

    Oliver Bierwagen

  2. Materials Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, 93106, USA

    Oliver Bierwagen, Takahiro Nagata, Mark E. White & James S. Speck

  3. National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0044, Japan

    Takahiro Nagata

  4. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, 93106, USA

    Min-Ying Tsai

Authors
  1. Oliver Bierwagen
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  2. Takahiro Nagata
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  3. Mark E. White
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  4. Min-Ying Tsai
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  5. James S. Speck
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Correspondence to Oliver Bierwagen.

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Bierwagen, O., Nagata, T., White, M.E. et al. Electron transport in semiconducting SnO2: Intentional bulk donors and acceptors, the interface, and the surface. Journal of Materials Research 27, 2232–2236 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2012.172

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2012.172

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