Discovery of New Transparent Conducting Materials

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Escalating global demand for energy and advancing technology has placed pressure on finite resources, notably precious metals. As optoelectronic consumption and waste rise, there is a growing need for materials that combine high functionality and sustainability while limiting toxicity and cost. This project focusses on the discovery of novel transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) which have applications in for example energy efficient glazing, solar cells and display technology.TCOs serve as a crucial functional layer in most optoelectronic devices, exhibiting intrinsic properties of high transparency to visible light and good electrical conductivity. Researchers have traditionally enhanced these properties through the degenerate doping of wide-band gap semiconductors such as indium-doped tin oxide (ITO) however, this approach to augmenting known materials is nearing its limits, with incremental improvements remaining. An alternative avenue for developing new TCOs lies in correlated metal oxides, a class of materials that offer electrical conductivity similar to that of metals while maintaining transparency in the visible comparable to wide-band semiconductors. This project aims to discover new correlated metal oxides, potentially serving as innovative and advanced TCOs, using sustainable transition metal oxides from groups IV, V and VI. Collaborating with computational scientists, thin film chemists and physicists, this project has been part of the accelerated discovery of new functional inorganic materials. Solid state synthesis of computationally predicted compositions has revealed novel phases with intriguing structures, shedding light on hexagonal perovskites featuring multivalent transition metal cations. Detailed structural characterisation of these new phases, employing synchrotron single crystal and powder X-ray diffraction data, supported by continuous rotation electron diffraction and 4-D STEM, have elucidated complex structures. Physical property measurements of these materials are characterised with the aim to discern structure-property relationships and access their potential for application as next-generation transparent conducting oxides.