Opto-electronic properties of poly-crystalline La doped BaSnO3 films deposited on quartz substrates

Abstract Highly conducting and transparent thin films of La x Ba 1 − x SnO 3 (x = 0, 0.01 and 0.05) were grown on quartz substrates via pulsed laser deposition. Conductivity increases in orders of magnitude upon vacuum annealing of the as–deposited films. This is attributed to the significant enhancement in carrier concentration due to the increased oxygen vacancy defects (V O ∙ ∙ ). Enhanced carrier concentration improves the metallicity in the films at room temperature. Metal to semiconductor transition (MST) is observed in the films with n e ⩾ 10 19 cm −3 at low temperatures. The MST shifts towards absolute zero temperature as the carrier concentration in the film increases. Low–temperature resistivity analysis suggests that the charge transport is mainly governed by strong electron–electron interaction. UV–Vis spectroscopy confirms a 60%–80% transmittance in the visible range (400–800 nm) for all the films. Due to the large change in carrier concentration, Burstein Moss (BM) shift is observed, and the bandgap ranges between 3.65–3.98 eV. The effective mass of electron and refractive index estimated from the BM shift and transmittance are found to be 0.6 m e and 2, respectively.