Is Cu3-x P a Semiconductor, a Metal, or a Semimetal?
© 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.
| Veröffentlicht in: | Chemistry of materials : a publication of the American Chemical Society. - 1998. - 35(2023), 3 vom: 14. Feb., Seite 1259-1272 |
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| 1. Verfasser: | |
| Weitere Verfasser: | , |
| Format: | Online-Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | English |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2023
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| Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk: | Chemistry of materials : a publication of the American Chemical Society |
| Schlagworte: | Journal Article |
| Zusammenfassung: | © 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. Despite the recent surge in interest in Cu3-x P for catalysis, batteries, and plasmonics, the electronic nature of Cu3-x P remains unclear. Some studies have shown evidence of semiconducting behavior, whereas others have argued that Cu3-x P is a metallic compound. Here, we attempt to resolve this dilemma on the basis of combinatorial thin-film experiments, electronic structure calculations, and semiclassical Boltzmann transport theory. We find strong evidence that stoichiometric, defect-free Cu3P is an intrinsic semimetal, i.e., a material with a small overlap between the valence and the conduction band. On the other hand, experimentally realizable Cu3-x P films are always p-type semimetals natively doped by copper vacancies regardless of x. It is not implausible that Cu3-x P samples with very small characteristic sizes (such as small nanoparticles) are semiconductors due to quantum confinement effects that result in the opening of a band gap. We observe high hole mobilities (276 cm2/(V s)) in Cu3-x P films at low temperatures, pointing to low ionized impurity scattering rates in spite of a high doping density. We report an optical effect equivalent to the Burstein-Moss shift, and we assign an infrared absorption peak to bulk interband transitions rather than to a surface plasmon resonance. From a materials processing perspective, this study demonstrates the suitability of reactive sputter deposition for detailed high-throughput studies of emerging metal phosphides |
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| Beschreibung: | Date Revised 24.02.2023 published: Electronic-eCollection Citation Status PubMed-not-MEDLINE |
| ISSN: | 0897-4756 |
| DOI: | 10.1021/acs.chemmater.2c03283 |