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Structural, optical, and electrical properties of low-concentration Ga-doped CdO thin films by pulsed laser deposition

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Abstract

CdO thin films with low Ga doping concentrations were deposited on low-cost glass substrates by pulsed laser deposition. The influence of Ga doping concentration on structural, electrical, and optical properties of CdO thin films was studied. The Ga-doped CdO thin films show decreasing plasma wavelength and resistivity when increasing doping concentration, and the widening optical gap varies from 2.49 to 2.85 eV with the Ga doping concentration increasing from 0.2 to 1.2 at% due to Moss–Burstein effect. When Ga doping concentration in CdO thin films was controlled at low level from 0.6 to 1.0 at%, the films achieved both high conductivity (~10−4 Ω·cm) and high transmittance up to the infrared region (>1600 nm), which demonstrates good potential as an ideal transparent conductor of full-spectrum photovoltaic devices.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Kin Man Yu from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for his contributions to this work. This work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (51472043, 51272035 and 51272037), China-Japan International Cooperation Program Funds (No. 2010DFA61410 and 2011DFA50530), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. ZYGX2014J023).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated Devices and School of Microelectronics and Solid-State Electronics, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, People’s Republic of China

    Enzhu Li, Huixian Zhuo, Hongcai He, Ning Wang & Tao Liu

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  1. Enzhu Li
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  2. Huixian Zhuo
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  3. Hongcai He
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  4. Ning Wang
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  5. Tao Liu
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Correspondence to Hongcai He.

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Li, E., Zhuo, H., He, H. et al. Structural, optical, and electrical properties of low-concentration Ga-doped CdO thin films by pulsed laser deposition. J Mater Sci 51, 7179–7185 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-016-9998-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-016-9998-0

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