Electron transport mechanism in colloidal SnO2 nanoparticle films and its implications for quantum-dot light-emitting diodes

Abstract

Abstract Charge transport behavior in SnO2 nanoparticle (NP) films is rather crucial to the optoelectronic devices. Temperature-dependent electrical results show that the electron transport in SnO2 NP films is dominated by the Mott variable-range hopping processes, i.e. the electrons are transported between different NPs through surface states rather than the conduction band of the nanocrystals, which is identical to the commonly used ZnO NP solids. Compared with ZnO, SnO2 films exhibit similar electron mobility but lower density of states (DOS). Therefore, we deduce that the low DOS in the SnO2 NP films should be the key factor limiting the device performance in compared with the ZnO as reported in most of the quantum-dot light-emitting diodes (QLEDs). Our work sheds light on optimizing SnO2 NP films for QLEDs. Moreover, we believe that the SnO2 remains a desirable candidate as the electron transport material for the QLEDs due to its excellent physicochemical stability.