Donor Design for Maximum Mobility TCOs

透明导电氧化物（TCO）在现代社会中无处不在，是大量消费电子产品（例如智能手机、平板电脑、膝上型电脑、平板显示器等）中的组件。迄今为止，市场份额最大的TCO是掺锡氧化铟（称为ITO），它显示出优异的透明度和导电性。铟在地壳中的含量并不丰富（并且经常在不稳定的地缘政治地区发现），加上全球消费电子产品需求的不可阻挡的增长，导致铟价格在过去十年中大幅波动。这引起工业界的关注，是可以理解的。存在其它TCO材料，例如氟掺杂的二氧化锡（FTO）、锑掺杂的二氧化锡（ATO）和铝掺杂的氧化锌（AZO），然而，它们尚未达到ITO的性能水平。在每种情况下，这些限制都与所使用的掺杂剂有关。最近，我们提出了一些特定的新型掺杂剂如何能够产生增强性能的TCO的初步理解，称为“远程杂质散射机制”，并且我们现在将在地球丰富的基质氧化物氧化锌、二氧化锡和锡酸钡中筛选新型掺杂剂，以便找到理想的TCO/掺杂剂组合。这将通过三种方式完成：1）新型掺杂剂的计算筛选2）使用低成本、可缩放的化学气相沉积沉积掺杂薄膜3）掺杂薄膜的物理表征计算化学、半导体物理和低成本可缩放沉积之间的协同方法将导致新的高性能、低成本、工业上可行的TCO。它们将从我们的实验室转移到我们项目合作伙伴的浮法玻璃生产线上的工业规模工艺中。

Transparent conducting oxides (TCO) are ubiquitous in modern society, being components in a vast array of consumer electronics (e.g. smart phones, tablets, lap tops, flat panel displays etc.) and finding use in applications such as solar cells, smart windows, low emissivity windows etc. To date, the TCO with the largest share of the market is tin doped indium oxide (known as ITO), which displays excellent transparency and conductivity. The fact that indium is not very abundant in the earth's crust (and is often found in unstable geopolitical areas), allied to the inexorable increase in the demand for consumer electronics globally, has caused large fluctuations in the price of indium over the past decade. This has understandably caused concern in the industrial sector. Other TCO materials exist, such as fluorine doped tin dioxide (FTO), antimony doped tin dioxide (ATO), and Aluminium doped zinc oxide (AZO), however, they have not reached the performance levels of ITO. In each case, the limitations are linked to the dopant that is usedRecently we proposed an initial understanding of how some specific novel dopants can produce enhanced performance TCOs, termed the "remote impurity scattering mechanism", and we will now screen novel dopants in the earth abundant host oxides zinc oxide, tin dioxide and barium stannate, in order to find the ideal TCO/dopant combination. This will be done in 3 ways:1) Computational screening of novel dopants2) Deposition of doped thin films using low cost, scaleable chemical vapour deposition3) Physical characterisation of the doped filmsThe synergistic approach between computational chemistry, semiconductor physics and low cost scaleable deposition will result in new high performance, low cost, industrially viable TCOs. They will be transferred from our labs to industrial scale processes on our project partner's float glass line.