Enhancing electron mobility in La-doped BaSnO3 thin films by thermal strain to annihilate extended defects

We report the enhancement of room-temperature electron mobility in La-doped BaSnO3 (LBSO) thin films with thermal strain induced by high temperature nitrogen (N2) annealing. Simple annealing under an N2 environment consistently doubled the electron mobility of the LBSO films on the SrTiO3 (STO) substrates to as high as 78 cm2 V−1 s−1 at a carrier concentration of 4.0 × 1020 cm−3. This enhancement is mainly attributed to annihilation of extended defects as a consequence of compressive strain induced by the difference in the thermal expansion coefficients of LBSO and STO. Our study suggests that thermal strain can be exploited to reduce extended defects and to facilitate electron transport in transparent oxide semiconductors.