Metallic charge transport and porosity appear almost mutually exclusive. Whereas metals demand large numbers of free carriers and must have minimal impurities and lattice vibrations to avoid charge scattering, the voids in porous materials limit the carrier concentration, provide ample space for impurities, and create more charge-scattering vibrations due to the size and flexibility of the lattice. No microporous material has been conclusively shown to behave as a metal. Here, we demonstrate that single crystals of the porous metal–organic framework Ln 1.5 (2,3,6,7,10,11-hexaoxytriphenylene) (Ln = La, Nd) are metallic. The materials display the highest room-temperature conductivities of all porous materials, reaching values above 1,000 S/cm. Single crystals of the compounds additionally show clear temperature-deactivated charge transport, a hallmark of a metallic material. Lastly, a structural transition consistent with charge density wave ordering, present only in metals and rare in any materials, provides additional conclusive proof of the metallic nature of the materials. Our results provide an example of a metal with porosity intrinsic to its structure. We anticipate that the combination of porosity and chemical tunability that these materials possess will provide a unique handle toward controlling the unconventional states that lie within them, such as charge density waves that we observed, or perhaps superconductivity.
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Disorder and its impact on mobility of undoped GaN
While it is widely appreciated that disorder is intricately related to observed sample-to-sample variation in property values, outside of very specialized cases, analysis is often qualitative in nature. One well-understood quantitative approach is based on the 1930s work of Bragg and Williams, who established an order parameter S, which ranges from unity in the case of a perfectly ordered structure to zero in the case of a completely randomized lattice. Here, we demonstrate that this order parameter is directly related to charge carrier mobility in undoped GaN. Extrapolating experimental points yields a value of 1640 cm2/Vs for the maximum room temperature mobility in stoichiometric material, with higher values potentially accessible for Ga-rich material. Additionally, we present a model for observed trends in carrier concentration based on the occurrence of distinct structural motifs, which underpin S. The result is an alternative perspective for the interplay between lattice structure and charge carriers that enables a predictive model for tuning mobility and carrier concentration in undoped material.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2003581
- PAR ID:
- 10556091
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Institute of Physics
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Applied Physics Letters
- Volume:
- 125
- Issue:
- 21
- ISSN:
- 0003-6951
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Crystal structure Electronic transport Semiconductors Epitaxy
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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