A new material for transparent electronics

(Nanowerk News) The performance of solar cells, flat panel displays, and other electronics are limited by today's materials. A new material, created by modifying a transparent insulating oxide, replacing up to 25 percent of the lanthanum ions in the host material with strontium ions, offers considerable promise. The new perovskite film, with the formula SrxLa1-xCrO3, (x up to 0.25), conducts electricity more effectively than the unmodified oxide and yet retains much of the transparency to visible light exhibited by the pure material.
Materials that are both electrically conductive and optically transparent are needed for more efficient solar cells, light detectors, and several kinds of electronic devices that are by nature transparent to visible light. Of particular importance are new materials that conduct electricity by using missing electrons, otherwise known as "holes." The new perovskite film falls into this category.
Lund
Scanning transmission electron micrograph of a p-Sr0.12La0.88CrO3/n-SrTiO3(001) heterojunction. The Sr0.12La0.88CrO3 conducts holes and the SrTiO3 conducts electrons. When particles of sunlight (photons) are absorbed in the material, an electron and a hole are created, and they move to opposite sides of the junction: the electron to the SrTiO3 and the hole to the Sr0.12La0.88CrO3. If the junction is connected to an electrical circuit, the electricity created by the light can be used for electrical power (solar cell application), or to detect the incoming light (photodetector application).
Methods
The development of high-performance transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) is critical to many technologies ranging from flat panel displays to solar cells. Although electron conducting (n-type) TCOs are presently in use in many devices, their hole-conducting (p-type) counterparts have not been commercialized as candidate materials because they exhibit much lower conductivities.
Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory along with collaborators at Binghamton University and the Paul Drude Institute in Berlin show that La1-xSrxCrO3 (LSCO) is a new p-type TCO with considerable potential.
The researchers demonstrate that crystalline LSCO films deposited on SrTiO3(001) by molecular beam epitaxy show figures of merit which are highly competitive with best p-type TCOs reported to date, and yet are more stable and structurally compatible with the workhorse materials of oxide electronics, as seen in the image. Being structurally and chemically compatible with other perovskite oxides, perovksite LSCO offers considerable promise in the design of all-perovskite oxide electronics.
References
Zhang KHL, Y Du, PV Sushko, ME Bowden, V Shutthanandan, S Sallis, LFJ Piper, and SA Chambers. 2015. "Hole-Induced Insulator-to-Metal Transition in La1-xSrxCrO3 Epitaxial Films." Physical Review B 91:155129. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.91.155129
Zhang KHL, Y Du, PV Sushko, ME Bowden, V Shutthanandan, L Qiao, GX Cao, Z Gai, S Sallis, LFJ Piper, and SA Chambers. 2015. "Electronic and Magnetic Properties of Epitaxial Perovskite SrCrO3(001)." Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter 27:245605. DOI: 10.1088/0953-8984/27/24/245605
Zhang K, Y Du, A Papadogianni, O Bierwagen, S Sallis, LFJ Piper, ME Bowden, V Shutthanandan, PV Sushko, and SA Chambers. 2015. "Perovskite Sr-doped LaCrO3 as a new p-type transparent conducting oxide." Advanced Materials, published online: August 6 (2015). DOI: 10.1002/adma.201501959
Source: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory