Tailoring Optical Properties in Transparent Highly Conducting Perovskites by Cationic Substitution.

SrMoO 3 , SrNbO 3 , and SrVO 3 are remarkable highly conducting d 1 (V, Nb) or d 2 (Mo) perovskite metals with an intrinsically high transparency in the visible. A key scientific question is how the optical properties of these materials can be manipulated to make them suitable for applications as transparent electrodes and in plasmonics. Here we show how 3d/4d cationic substitution in perovskites tailors the relevant materials parameters, i.e., optical transition energy and plasma frequency. At the example of the solid-state solution SrV 1- x Mo x O 3 we show that the absorption and reflection edges can be shifted to the edges of the visible light spectrum, resulting in a material that has the potential to outperform indium tin oxide (ITO) due to its extremely low sheet resistance. We find an optimum for x = 0.5, where a resistivity of 32 μΩcm (≈ 12 Ω/sq.) is paired with a transmittance above 84% in the whole visible spectrum. Quantitative comparison between experiments and electronic structure calculations show that the shift of the plasma frequency is governed by the interplay of d-band filling and electronic correlations. This study advances our knowledge about the peculiar class of highly conducting perovskites toward sustainable transparent conductors and emergent plasmonics. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.