We present electrical properties of Schottky barrier diodes on room-temperature deposited amorphous zinc-tin-oxide (ZTO) with Zn/(Zn + Sn) contents between 0.12 and 0.72. A combinatorial approach with continuous composition spread pulsed laser deposition is used to achieve the wide range of compositions with four samples each on 50 × 50 mm2 glass substrates. The Schottky barrier contacts were fabricated by the reactive direct-current sputtering of platinum. Best diode properties (rectification ratio SV = 2.7 × 107, ideality factor η = 1.05, and effective barrier height ϕB,eff = 1.25 eV) are obtained for a composition of 0.63 Zn/(Zn + Sn). Aging on the timescale of days and months is observed that leads to improved device properties (higher rectifications and lower ideality factors). In particular, the diodes with the lowest performance in the as-prepared state show the biggest improvements. The best diode properties after the aging process (SV = 3.9 × 107, η = 1.12, and ϕB,eff = 1.31 eV) were also observed for 0.63 Zn/(Zn + Sn).

Continuous composition spread (CCS) methods allow fast and economic exploration of composition dependent properties of multielement compounds. Here, a CCS method was applied for room temperature pulsed laser deposition (PLD) of amorphous zinc-tin-oxide to gain detailed insight into the influence of the zinc-to-tin cation ratio on optical and electrical properties of this ternary compound. Our CCS approach for a large-area offset PLD process utilizes a segmented target and thus makes target exchange or movable masks in the PLD chamber obsolete. Cation concentrations of 0.08-0.82 Zn/(Zn + Sn) were achieved across single 50 × 50 mm(2) glass substrates. The electrical conductivity increases for increasing tin content, and the absorption edge shifts to lower energies. The free carrier concentration can be tuned from 10(20) to 10(16) cm(-3) by variation of the cation ratio from 0.1 to 0.5 Zn/(Zn + Sn).

We present the history of, and the latest progress in, the field of bipolar oxide thin film devices. As such we consider primarily pn-junctions in which at least one of the materials is a metal oxide semiconductor. A wide range of n-type and p-type oxides has been explored for the formation of such bipolar diodes. Since most oxide semiconductors are unipolar, challenges and opportunities exist with regard to the formation of heterojunction diodes and band lineups. Recently, various approaches have led to devices with high rectification, namely p-type ZnCo2O4 and NiO on n-type ZnO and amorphous zinc-tin-oxide. Subsequent bipolar devices and applications such as photodetectors, solar cells, junction field-effect transistors and integrated circuits like inverters and ring oscillators are discussed. The tremendous progress shows that bipolar oxide electronics has evolved from the exploration of various materials and heterostructures to the demonstration of functioning integrated circuits. Therefore a viable, facile and high performance technology is ready for further exploitation and performance optimization.