Surface scattering effect on the electrical mobility of ultrathin Ce doped In 2 O 3 film prepared at low temperature

Abstract Electrical conduction behavior of ultrathin cerium doped In2O3 (ICO) films fabricated by reactive plasma deposition (RPD) method at low temperature is investigated. It is found that both carrier density and mobility of ICO film are dependent on the film thickness strongly. When the film thickness is increased from 5 nm to 300 nm, carrier density improved gradually from 0.5 × 1020 cm−3 to 2.1 × 1020 cm−3, while carrier mobility increased from 35.1 cm2/Vs to 153.7 cm2/Vs and then decreased slightly to 121.5 cm2/Vs. The limited carrier mobility is theoretically discussed from analyzing the counterplay between grains boundary scattering-limited and surface scattering-limited mechanism.