Thermopower modulation clarification of the intrinsic effective mass in a transparent oxide semiconductor, BaSnO3

Although there are so many reports on the carrier effective mass (m*) of a transparent oxide semiconductor BaSnO3, it is almost impossible to know the intrinsic m* value because the reported m* values are scattered from 0.06 to 3.7 m0. Here we successfully clarified the intrinsic m* of BaSnO3, m*=0.40 0.01 m0, by the thermopower modulation clarification method. We also found the threshold of degenerate/non-degenerate semiconductor of BaSnO3; At the threshold, the thermopower value of both La-doped BaSnO3 and BaSnO3 TFT structure was 240 microvolt k-1, bulk carrier concentration was 1.4E19 cm-3, and two-dimensional sheet carrier concentration was 1.8E12 cm-2. When the EF locates above the parabolic shaped conduction band bottom, rather high mobility was observed. On the contrary, very low carrier mobility was observed when the EF lays below the threshold, most likely due to that the tail states suppress the carrier mobility. The present results are useful for further development of BaSnO3 based oxide electronics.