Magnetism and transport in transparent high-mobility BaSnO3 films doped with La, Pr, Nd, and Gd

Journal article

We have explored the effect of magnetic rare-earth dopants substitutionally incorporated on the Ba sites of BaSnO₃ in terms of electronic transport, magnetism, and optical properties. We show that for Ba_0.92R_0.08SnO₃ thin films (where R=La,Pr,Nd,Gd), there is a linear increase of mobility with carrier concentration across all doping schemes. La-doped films have the highest mobilities, followed by Pr- and Nd-doped films. Gd-doped samples have the largest ionic size mismatch with the Ba site and correspondingly the lowest carrier concentrations and electron mobilities. However, crystallinity does not appear to be a strong predictor of transport phenomena; our results suggest that point defects more than grain boundaries are key ingredients in tuning the conduction of BaSnO₃ films grown by pulsed laser deposition. Pronounced, nonhysteretic x-ray magnetic dichroism signals are observed for Pr-, Nd-, and Gd-doped samples, indicating paramagnetism. Finally, we probe the optical constants for each of the BaSnO₃ doping schemes and note that there is little change in the transmittance across all samples. Together these results shed light on conduction mechanisms in BaSnO₃ doped with rare-earth cations.

Authors: Alaan, US; Wong, FJ; Ditto, JJ; Robertson, AW; Lindgren, E

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Journal: Physical Review Materials
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 12
• Article number: 124402
• Publication date: 2019-12-09
• Acceptance date: 2019-11-04
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.3.124402
• EISSN: 2475-9953
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR