Cation defects and conductivity in transparent oxides

High quality doped zinc oxide and mixed transition metal spinel oxide films have been deposited by means of sputter deposition from metal and metal oxide targets, and by spin casting from aqueous or alcoholic precursor solutions. Deposition conditions and post-deposition processing are found to alter cation oxidation states and their distributions in both oxide materials resulting in marked changes to both optical transmission and electrical response. For ZnO, partial reduction of the neat or doped material by hydrogen treatment of the heated film or by electrochemical processing renders the oxide n-type conducting. Continued reduction was found to diminish conductivity. In contrast, oxidation of the infrared transparent p-type spinel conductors typified by NiCo2O4 was found to increase conductivity. The disparate behavior of these two materials is caused, in part, by the sign of the charge carrier and by the existence of two different charge transport mechanisms that are identified as free carrier conduction and polaron hopping. While much work has been reported concerning structure/property relationships in the free carrier conducting oxides, there is a significantly smaller body of information on transparent polaron conductors. In this paper, we identify key parameters that promote conductivity in mixed metal spinel oxides and compare their behavior with that of the free carrier TCO's.