What Limits Mobility in Hydrogenated Indium Oxide

Understanding the electron scattering mechanisms dominating transport in high and low mobility transparent conducting oxides can provide insight into improving the properties of this crucial photovoltaic device layer. Contributions from ionized impurity scattering, phonon scattering, and grain boundary scattering were measured and quantified in hydrogenated indium oxide thin films, which had varying composition and grain size, resulting in a wide range of carrier densities $(\sim 10^{1S}\mathrm {c}\mathrm {m}^{-3}-\sim 10^{20}\mathrm {c}\mathrm {m}^{-3})$ and carrier mobilities $(\sim 10 \mathrm {c}\mathrm {m}^{2}/\mathrm {V}\mathrm {s} - \gt100 \mathrm {c}\mathrm {m}^{2}/\mathrm {V}\mathrm {s})$. We used temperature-dependent Hall measurements from 5–300 Kelvin to characterize electrical properties of the sputtered films. Grain boundary scattering dominated films with the lowest mobility, whereas films with $\gt100 \mathrm {c}\mathrm {m}^{2}/\mathrm {V}\mathrm {s}$ mobilities were dominated by contributions from ionized impurity scattering and polar optical phonon scattering.