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BaTiO3 is typically a strong n-type material with tuneable optoelectronic properties via doping and controlling the synthesis conditions. It has a wide band gap that can only harness the ultraviolet region of the solar spectrum. Despite significant progress, achieving visible-light absorbing BTO with tuneable carrier concentration has been challenging, a crucial requirement for many applications. In this work, a p-type BTO with visible-light absorption is realized via iridium doping. Detailed analysis using advanced spectroscopy tools and computational electronic structure analysis is used to rationalize the n- to p-type transition after Ir doping. Results offered mechanistic insight into the interplay between the dopant site occupancy, the dopant position within the band gap, and the defect chemistry affecting the carrier concentration. A decrease in the Ti3+ donor levels concentration and the mutually correlated oxygen vacancies upon Ir doping is attributed to the p-type behavior. Due to the formation of Ir3+ or Ir4+ in-gap energy levels within the forbidden region, the optical transition can be elicited from or to such levels resulting in visible-light absorption. This newly developed Ir-doped BTO can be a promising p-type perovskite-oxide with imminent applications in solar fuel generation, spintronics and optoelectronics., Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures

We present a theoretical description of the influence of misfit strain on mobile defects dynamics in thin strained ferroelectric films. Self-consistent solutions obtained by coupling the Poissons equation for electric potential with continuity equations for mobile donor and electron concentrations and time-dependent Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire equations reveal that the Vegard mechanism (chemical pressure) leads to the redistribution of both charged and electro-neutral defects in order to decrease the effective stress in the film. Internal electric fields, both built-in and depolarization ones, lead to a strong accumulation of screening space charges (charged defects and electrons) near the film interfaces. Importantly, the corresponding screening length is governed by the misfit strain and Vegard coefficient. Mobile defects dynamics, kinetics of polarization and electric current reversal are defined by the complex interplay between the donor, electron and phonon relaxation times, misfit strain, finite size effect and Vegard stresses., Comment: 34 pages, 7 figures, supplementary materials