Electron transport in semiconducting SnO₂: Intentional bulk donors and acceptors, the interface, and the surface

The transport properties of doped and undoped, high quality, plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy grown tin dioxide (SnO2) thin films are reviewed. Intentional doping can vary the SnO2resistivity over more than seven orders of magnitude from a transparent conducting oxide-like conductivity up to the semi-insulating range. A region of high unintentional n-type conductivity was identified in the substrate interface region and had to be accounted for. Sb was a well-behaved shallow donor up to the regime of conducting oxides. In and Ga were too deep acceptors to achieve p-type conductivity but were suitable to render SnO2semi-insulating. While the surface accumulation layer strongly influenced contact properties, its conductance was negligible. The methodology used here for studying the transport can also be applied to other semiconducting oxides.