Chalcogenide Perovskite YScS_3 as a Potential p-Type Transparent Conducting Material

Transparent conducting materials (TCMs) have been widely used in optoelectronic applications such as touchscreens, flat panel displays and thin film solar cells. These applications of TCMs are currently dominated by n-type doped oxides. High-performance p-type TCMs are still lacking due to their low hole mobility or p-type doping bottleneck, which impedes efficient device design and novel applications such as transparent electronics. Here, based on first-principles calculations, we propose chalcogenide perovskite YScS_3 as a promising p-type TCM. According to our calculations, its optical absorption onset is above 3 eV, which allows transparency to visible light. Its hole conductivity effective mass is 0.48m_0, which is among the smallest in p-type TCMs, suggesting enhanced hole mobility. It could be doped to p-type by group-II elements on cation sites, all of which yield shallow acceptors. Combining these properties, YScS_3 holds great promise to enhancing the performance of p-type TCMs toward their n-type counterparts.