Preparation by chemical solution deposition and transparent conducting properties of LaRh1-xNixO3 thin films

Transparent conducting thin films have been widely used in lots of fields. The absence of high-performance holetype transparent conducting thin films, however, seriously limits the wider applications. LaRhO3 as a type of perovskite material shows hole-type conduction with semiconductor-like properties and no investigations have been carried out about transparent conducting properties on LaRhO3 thin films. Here, LaRh1-xNixO3 (x = 0, 0.05, 0.1) thin films were firstly deposited by chemical solution deposition, showing epitaxial growth on single crystal SrTiO3 (001) substrates with the epitaxial relationship of LaRhO3(001)[110]||SrTiO3(001)[110]. With the doping of Ni element, the surface morphology became denser. Hall measurements confirmed that the hole concentration was enhanced with Ni doping, resulting in the decreased resistivity. Low resistivity of 17.3 m & omega; cm at 300K was obtained for the LaRh0.9Ni0.1O3 thin films. The electrical transport mechanisms were investigated, showing thermal activation at high temperatures and variable range hopping model for the doped thin films at low temperatures. The transmittance within the visible range for all thin films was higher than 50%. The results will provide a feasible route to deposit hole-type transparent conducting LaRhO3-based thin films.