Free-carrier screening unlocks high electron mobility in ultrawide bandgap semiconductor CaSnO3

Alkaline earth stannates have emerged as promising transparent conducting oxides due to their wide bandgaps and high room-temperature electron mobilities. Among them, CaSnO3 possesses the widest bandgap, yet reported mobilities vary widely and are highly sample-dependent, leaving its intrinsic limit unclear. Here, we present ab initio calculations of electron mobility in CaSnO3 across a range of temperatures and doping levels, using state-of-the-art methods that explicitly account for free-carrier screening in electron-phonon interactions. We identify the dominant limiting mechanism to be the long-range longitudinal optical phonon scattering, which is significantly suppressed at high doping due to free-carrier screening, leading to enhanced phonon-limited mobility. While ionized impurity scattering emerges as a competing mechanism at carrier concentrations up to ∼ 1020 cm−3, the phonon scattering reduction dominates, yielding a net mobility increase with predicted room-temperature values reaching about twice the highest experimental report. Our work highlights the substantial untapped conductivity in CaSnO3, establishing it as a compelling ultrawide bandgap semiconductor for transparent and high-power electronic applications.

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Publication Details

Journal
Applied Physics Letters
Published
2025-09-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0282908
Primary Topic
Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Free-carrier screening unlocks high electron mobility in ultrawide bandgap semiconductor CaSnO3

Chuanyu Zhang, Wenjie Hu, Jin-Jian Zhou, Jiayi Gong
Applied Physics Letters
Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides
article

Free-carrier screening unlocks high electron mobility in ultrawide bandgap semiconductor CaSnO3

Chuanyu Zhang, Wenjie Hu, Jin-Jian Zhou, Jiayi Gong
article en

Abstract

Alkaline earth stannates have emerged as promising transparent conducting oxides due to their wide bandgaps and high room-temperature electron mobilities. Among them, CaSnO3 possesses the widest bandgap, yet reported mobilities vary widely and are highly sample-dependent, leaving its intrinsic limit unclear. Here, we present ab initio calculations of electron mobility in CaSnO3 across a range of temperatures and doping levels, using state-of-the-art methods that explicitly account for free-carrier screening in electron-phonon interactions. We identify the dominant limiting mechanism to be the long-range longitudinal optical phonon scattering, which is significantly suppressed at high doping due to free-carrier screening, leading to enhanced phonon-limited mobility. While ionized impurity scattering emerges as a competing mechanism at carrier concentrations up to ∼ 1020 cm−3, the phonon scattering reduction dominates, yielding a net mobility increase with predicted room-temperature values reaching about twice the highest experimental report. Our work highlights the substantial untapped conductivity in CaSnO3, establishing it as a compelling ultrawide bandgap semiconductor for transparent and high-power electronic applications.

Applied Physics LettersVol. 127(9)
Beijing Institute of Technology (CN), Chengdu University of Information Technology (CN), Chengdu University of Technology (CN)
National Natural Science Foundation of China, Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation, National Key Research and Development Program of China
Openalex Percentile: Top 82%
Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides
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