Employing high-temperature-grown SrZrO3 buffer to enhance the electron mobility in La:BaSnO3-based heterostructures

We report a synthetic route to achieve high electron mobility at room temperature in epitaxial La:BaSnO3/SrZrO3 heterostructures prepared on several oxide substrates. Room-temperature mobilities of 157, 145, and 143 cm2 V−1 s−1 are achieved for heterostructures grown on DyScO3 (110), MgO (001), and TbScO3 (110) crystalline substrates, respectively. This is realized by first employing pulsed laser deposition to grow at very high temperature the SrZrO3 buffer layer to reduce dislocation density in the active layer, then followed by the epitaxial growth of an overlaying La:BaSnO3 active layer by molecular-beam epitaxy. Structural properties of these heterostructures are investigated, and the extracted upper limit of threading dislocations is well below 1.0 × 10 10 cm−2 for buffered films on DyScO3, MgO, and TbScO3 substrates. The present results provide a promising route toward achieving high mobility in buffered La:BaSnO3 films prepared on most, if not all, oxide substrates with large compressive or tensile lattice mismatches to the film.