Electronic structure of BaSnO3 investigated by high-energy-resolution electron energy-loss spectroscopy and ab initio calculations

TL;DR

This study combines high-resolution electron energy-loss spectroscopy and ab initio calculations to thoroughly analyze the electronic structure of BaSnO3 films, revealing insights into its dielectric function, band structure, and electronic transitions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive electronic structure analysis of BaSnO3 using experimental and theoretical methods, including data from different film growth techniques.

Findings

Detailed dielectric function of BaSnO3

Identification of bulk plasmon energies and interband transitions

Measured band gap consistent with theoretical predictions

Abstract

There has been growing interest in perovskite BaSnO3 due to its desirable properties for oxide electronic devices including high electron mobility at room temperature and optical transparency. As these electronic and optical properties originate largely from the electronic structure of the material, here the basic electronic structure of epitaxially-grown BaSnO3 films is studied using high-energy-resolution electron energy-loss spectroscopy in a transmission electron microscope and ab initio calculations. This study provides a detailed description of the dielectric function of BaSnO3, including the energies of bulk plasmon excitations and critical interband electronic transitions, the band structure and partial densities of states, the measured band gap, and more. To make the study representative of a variety of deposition methods, results from BaSnO3 films grown by both hybrid molecular beam epitaxy and high pressure oxygen sputter deposition are reported.