Combinatorial Insights into Doping Control and Transport Properties of Zinc Tin Nitride
- National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO (United States)
- National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA (United States)
ZnSnN2 is an Earth-abundant semiconductor analogous to the III–nitrides with potential as a solar absorber due to its direct bandgap, steep absorption onset, and disorder-driven bandgap tunability. Despite these desirable properties, discrepancies in the fundamental bandgap and degenerate n-type carrier density have been prevalent issues in the limited amount of literature available on this material. We we use a combinatorial RF co-sputtering approach, we explored a growth-temperature-composition space for Zn1+xSn1-xN2 over the ranges 35–340 °C and 0.30–0.75 Zn/(Zn + Sn). In this way, we identified an optimal set of deposition parameters for obtaining as-deposited films with wurtzite crystal structure and carrier density as low as 1.8 × 1018 cm-3. Films grown at 230 °C with Zn/(Zn + Sn) = 0.60 were found to have the largest grain size overall (70 nm diameter on average) while also exhibiting low carrier density (3 × 1018 cm-3) and high mobility (8.3 cm2 V-1 s-1). Using this approach, we establish the direct bandgap of cation-disordered ZnSnN2 at 1.0 eV. Moreover, we report tunable carrier density as a function of cation composition, in which lower carrier density is observed for higher Zn content. Consequently, this relationship manifests as a Burstein–Moss shift widening the apparent bandgap as cation composition moves away from Zn-rich. Collectively, these findings provide important insight into the fundamental properties of the Zn–Sn–N material system and highlight the potential to utilize ZnSnN2 for photovoltaics.
- Research Organization:
- National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC36-08GO28308
- OSTI ID:
- 1227680
- Report Number(s):
- NREL/JA-5J00-64356
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Materials Chemistry. C, Vol. 3, Issue 42; Related Information: Journal of Materials Chemistry C; ISSN 2050-7526
- Publisher:
- Royal Society of Chemistry
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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