Abstract
The fundamental challenge for designing transparent conductors used in photovoltaics, displays and solid-state lighting is the ideal combination of high optical transparency and high electrical conductivity. Satisfying these competing demands is commonly achieved by increasing carrier concentration in a wide-bandgap semiconductor with low effective carrier mass through heavy doping, as in the case of tin-doped indium oxide (ITO). Here, an alternative design strategy for identifying high-conductivity, high-transparency metals is proposed, which relies on strong electron-electron interactions resulting in an enhancement in the carrier effective mass. This approach is experimentally verified using the correlated metals SrVO3 and CaVO3, which, despite their high carrier concentration (>2.2 × 1022 cm-3), have low screened plasma energies (<1.33 eV), and demonstrate excellent performance when benchmarked against ITO. A method is outlined to rapidly identify other candidates among correlated metals, and strategies are proposed to further enhance their performance, thereby opening up new avenues to develop transparent conductors.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 204-210 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Nature Materials |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 1 2016 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
We gratefully acknowledge support by the Office of Naval Research through Grant No. N00014-11-1-0665 (L.Z., Y.Z., C.E., L.G., K.M.R., V.G., R.E.-H.), the National Science Foundation through the Penn State MRSEC Program DMR-1420620 (H.-T.Z., W.Z., M.H.W.C.) and Grant No. DMR-1352502 (L.Z., R.E.-H.), the Department of Energy through Grant DE-SC0012375 (M.B., R.E.-H.), the University of Toledo start up funds and the Ohio Department of Development (ODOD) Ohio Research Scholar Program entitled Northwest Ohio Innovators in Thin Film Photovoltaics, Grant No. TECH 09-025 (A.B., H.F.H., N.P.). We thank R. Averitt for stimulating discussions.