Over the past decade, SnO has been considered a promising p-type oxide semiconductor. However, achieving high mobility in the fabrication of p-type SnO films is still highly dependent on the post-annealing procedure, which is often used to make SnO, due to its metastable nature, readily convertible to SnO2 and/or intermediate phases. This paper demonstrates a fully room-temperature fabrication of p-type SnOx thin films using ion-beam-assisted deposition. This technique offers independent control between ion density, via the ion-gun anode current and oxygen flow rate, and ion energy, via the ion-gun anode voltage, thus being able to optimize the optical band gap and the hole mobility of the SnO films to reach 2.70 eV and 7.89 cm2 V-1 s-1, respectively, without the need for annealing. Remarkably, this is the highest mobility reported for p-type SnO films whose fabrication was carried out entirely at room temperature. Using first-principles calculations, we rationalize that the high mobility is associated with the fine-tuning of the Sn-rich-related defects and lattice densification, obtained by controlling the density and energy of the oxygen ions, both of which optimize the spatial overlap of the valence bands to form a continuous conduction path for the holes. Moreover, due to the absence of the annealing process, the Raman spectra reveal no significant signatures of microcrystal formation in the films. This behavior contrasts with the case involving the air-annealing procedure, where a complex interaction occurs between the formation of SnO microcrystals and the formation of SnOx intermediate phases. This interplay results in variations in grain texture within the film, leading to a lower optimum Hall mobility of only 5.17 cm2 V-1 s-1. Finally, we demonstrate the rectification characteristics of all-fabricated-at-room-temperature SnOx-based p-n devices to confirm the viability of the p-type SnOx films.
Keywords: IBAD; Urbach energy; p-type oxide semiconductor; p−n diode; room-temperature p-type SnO.