Chemical deposition of Cu<sub>2</sub>O films with ultra-low resistivity: correlation with the defect landscape.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36085298.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-32943-4 and PMC identifier 9463139.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Cuprous oxide (Cu<sub>2</sub>O) is a promising p-type semiconductor material for many applications. So far, the lowest resistivity values are obtained for films deposited by physical methods and/or at high temperatures (~1000 °C), limiting their mass integration. Here, Cu<sub>2</sub>O thin films with ultra-low resistivity values of 0.4 Ω.cm were deposited at only 260 °C by atmospheric pressure spatial atomic layer deposition, a scalable chemical approach. The carrier concentration (7.10<sup>14</sup>-2.10<sup>18</sup> cm<sup>-3</sup>), mobility (1-86 cm<sup>2</sup>/V.s), and optical bandgap (2.2-2.48 eV) are easily tuned by adjusting the fraction of oxygen used during deposition. The properties of the films are correlated to the defect landscape, as revealed by a combination of techniques (positron annihilation spectroscopy (PAS), Raman spectroscopy and photoluminescence). Our results reveal the existence of large complex defects and the decrease of the overall defect concentration in the films with increasing oxygen fraction used during deposition.