Transparent Conducting Oxides Thin Films for Optical Engineering

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will highlight progress in the growth of transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) thin films and multilayers, as well as the understanding of the interplay between their structural, transport, and optical properties at a fundamental level. These materials have become ubiquitous in key modern technologies such as optoelectronics, photovoltaic cells, smart windows, light-emitting devices, photonics, all with a strong impact on the development of society. To better adapt the material properties to application requirements, several issues must still be addressed, such as efficient and controllable n/p-type doping, potential p-type TCOs with intrinsic higher holes mobility and functional broadband transparency. Highly performant TCO thin films need advances in processing and device integration. New synthesis methods should be developed to ensure real-time control of the concentration and distribution of defects and dopants.

More insight into the optical absorption/emission processes is essential for future device applications. TCOs are promising plasmonic materials in the NIR operating wavelength. In the epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) regime, strong nonlinear effects and near-zero-index phenomena occur, while beyond the ENZ regime, TCOs have proven to be suitable optical metasurface materials. Emergent phenomena related to the tuning and modulation of the refractive index by external excitations have also opened exciting possibilities for new device concepts with coupled electrical and optical modes. Last, but not least, advances in cost-efficient TCOs growth methods, device fabrication, and integration technologies may significantly contribute to the development of integrated photonic devices and ultrahigh-speed information processing chips.

The topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following research domains:

• New TCO materials, thin films, and multilayers.
• Non-stoichiometric TCOs.
• Surface and interface engineering.
• Conduction mechanisms.
• Optical absorption/emission processes.
• Insulator–metal transitions and correlated metallic state.
• Electron correlations in highly doped TCOs, plasmonic effects.
• p-type TCOs, such as delafossite oxides and oxychalcogenides.
• TCOs for low-loss metamaterials.
• High figure of merit p-type TCOs.
• Materials design by computational methods and machine learning.

Dr. Rodica Plugaru
Guest Editor

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• TCO thin films and multilayers
• doped oxides, delafossite oxides, oxychalcogenides
• optical properties engineering
• TCOs metamaterials
• computational and machine learning