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Title: Extracting the effective mass of electrons in transparent conductive oxide thin films using Seebeck coefficient

Journal Article · · Applied Physics Letters
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4879995· OSTI ID:22300279
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  1. State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated Devices, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054 (China)

A method is proposed that combines Seebeck coefficient and carrier concentration to determine the electron effective mass of transparent conductive oxide (TCO) thin films. Experiments were conducted to test the validity of this approach on the transparent conductive Ga-doped ZnO thin films deposited by magnetron sputtering. An evident agreement of the calculated electron effective mass of the films is observed between the proposed approach and the previous studies. Besides, the optical carrier concentration and mobility derived from the calculated electron effective mass and spectroscopic ellipsometry using a complex dielectric function are consistent with those from direct Hall-effect measurement. The agreements suggest that Seebeck coefficient can serve as an alternative tool for extracting the effective mass of electrons in TCO films.

OSTI ID:
22300279
Journal Information:
Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 104, Issue 21; Other Information: (c) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0003-6951
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English