Complex oxide materials form a large family of compounds with highly tuneable electronic properties, making them important for electronics, magnetic devices, and energy technologies. In many of these materials, electrons interact strongly with lattice vibrations and form polarons, quasiparticles consisting of an electron plus the surrounding lattice distortion. Polarons play a key role in determining how materials conduct electricity, but they are difficult to study because theoretical modelling requires advanced methods to describe strong electron-lattice interactions characteristic of polarons, and experiments must be performed on ultraclean samples to reveal intrinsic behaviour.

In this work, the researchers combine experimental and theoretical approaches to study polarons in TiO₂, a material that is ideal for this purpose because it has a simple crystal structure, well‑known phonon modes, well‑characterised defects, and strong, reproducible electron-phonon coupling. They use a state of the art simulation method called first‑principles electron‑phonon diagrammatic Monte Carlo (FEP‑DMC), which accurately predicts polaron formation and transport. The calculations predict a room temperature mobility of around 45 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ and a characteristic temperature scaling of μ ∝ T⁻¹·⁹, while also revealing microscopic details of polaron structure, phonon cloud distribution, and lattice distortion that experiments alone cannot access.

The team then grew ultrahigh‑quality TiO₂ thin films with controlled oxygen vacancies using hybrid molecular beam epitaxy, achieving record high electron mobility in excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions. Microscopy and spectroscopy measurements show that oxygen vacancies act as intrinsic n‑type dopants and strongly influence low‑temperature transport, including in‑plane resistance anisotropy and signatures of the Kondo effect.

Together, these results provide the most detailed picture to date of how large polarons move in TiO₂ and demonstrate that the theoretical method is a reliable predictive tool for polaronic materials. This unified framework will help guide the design and engineering of improved electronic and energy materials in the future.

Do you want to learn more about this topic?

Review Phonons and thermal transport in graphene and graphene-based materials by Denis L Nika and Alexander A Balandin (2017)