Free-carrier screening unlocks high electron mobility in ultrawide bandgap semiconductor CaSnO$_3$

Abstract

Alkaline earth stannates have emerged as promising transparent conducting oxides due to their wide band gaps and high room-temperature electron mobilities. Among them, CaSnO$_3$ possesses the widest band gap, yet reported mobilities vary widely and are highly sample-dependent, leaving its intrinsic limit unclear. Here, we present ab initio calculations of electron mobility in CaSnO$_3$ across a range of temperatures and doping levels, using state-of-the-art methods that explicitly account for free-carrier screening in electron-phonon interactions. We identify the dominant limiting mechanism to be the long-range longitudinal optical phonon scattering, which is significantly suppressed at high doping due to free-carrier screening, leading to enhanced phonon-limited mobility. While ionized impurity scattering emerges as a competing mechanism at carrier concentrations up to ~10$^{20}$ cm$^{-3}$, the phonon scattering reduction dominates, yielding a net mobility increase with predicted room-temperature values reaching about twice the highest experimental report. Our work highlights the substantial untapped conductivity in CaSnO$_3$, establishing it as a compelling ultrawide bandgap semiconductor for transparent and high-power electronic applications.