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arXiv · 2401.12158

Electron mobility of SnO2 from first principles

Amanda Wang·Kyle Bushick·Nick Pant·Woncheol Lee·Xiao Zhang·Joshua Leveillee·Feliciano Giustino·Samuel Poncé·Emmanouil Kioupakis
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Abstract

The transparent conducting oxide SnO2 is a wide bandgap semiconductor that is easily n-type doped and widely used in various electronic and optoelectronic applications. Experimental reports of the electron mobility of this material vary widely depending on the growth conditions and doping concentrations. In this work, we calculate the electron mobility of SnO2 from first principles to examine the temperature- and doping-concentration dependence, and to elucidate the scattering mechanisms that limit transport. We include both electron-phonon scattering and electron-ionized impurity scattering to accurately model scattering in a doped semiconductor. We find a strongly anisotropic mobility that favors transport in the direction parallel to the c-axis. At room temperature and intrinsic carrier concentrations, the low-energy polar-optical phonon modes dominate scattering, while ionized-impurity scattering dominates above 10^18 cm^-3.

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Amanda Wang, Kyle Bushick, Nick Pant, Woncheol Lee, Xiao Zhang, Joshua Leveillee, Feliciano Giustino, Samuel Poncé, Emmanouil Kioupakis. 2024-01-22. Electron mobility of SnO2 from first principles. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0198885

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