Oxide Two-Dimensional Electron Gas with High Mobility at Room-Temperature.

The prospect of 2-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) possessing high mobility at room temperature in wide-bandgap perovskite stannates is enticing for oxide electronics, particularly to realize transparent and high-electron mobility transistors. Nonetheless only a small number of studies to date report 2DEGs in BaSnO3 -based heterostructures. Here, 2DEG formation at the LaScO3 /BaSnO3 (LSO/BSO) interface with a room-temperature mobility of 60 cm2  V-1  s-1 at a carrier concentration of 1.7 × 1013  cm-2 is reported. This is an order of magnitude higher mobility at room temperature than achieved in SrTiO3 -based 2DEGs. This is achieved by combining a thick BSO buffer layer with an ex situ high-temperature treatment, which not only reduces the dislocation density but also produces a SnO2 -terminated atomically flat surface, followed by the growth of an overlying BSO/LSO interface. Using weak beam dark-field transmission electron microscopy imaging and in-line electron holography technique, a reduction of the threading dislocation density is revealed, and direct evidence for the spatial confinement of a 2DEG at the BSO/LSO interface is provided. This work opens a new pathway to explore the exciting physics of stannate-based 2DEGs at application-relevant temperatures for oxide nanoelectronics.

Separating Electrons and Donors in BaSnO3 via Band Engineering.

Separating electrons from their source atoms in La-doped BaSnO3, the first perovskite oxide semiconductor to be discovered with high room-temperature electron mobility, remains a subject of great interest for achieving high-mobility electron gas in two dimensions. So far, the vast majority of work in perovskite oxides has focused on heterostructures involving SrTiO3 as an active layer. Here we report the demonstration of modulation doping in BaSnO3 as the high room-temperature mobility host without the use of SrTiO3. Significantly, we show the use of angle-resolved hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (HAXPES) as a nondestructive approach to not only determine the location of electrons at the buried interface but also to quantify the width of electron distribution in BaSnO3. The transport results are in good agreement with the results of self-consistent solution to one-dimensional Poisson and Schrödinger equations. Finally, we discuss viable routes to engineer two-dimensional electron gas density through band-offset engineering.