Infrared Transparent and Electromagnetic Shielding Correlated Metals via Lattice-Orbital-Charge Coupling

Despite being a requisite for modern transparent electronics, few metals have a sufficiently high infrared transmittance due to the free electron response. Here, upon alloying the correlated metal SrVO3 with BaVO3, the medium wavelength infrared transmittance at a wavelength of 4 mu m is found to be 50% higher than those for Sn-doped In2O3 (ITO) and La-doped BaSnO3 (BLSO). The room temperature resistivity of the alloy of similar to 100 mu omega cm is 1 order of magnitude lower than those of ITO and BLSO, guaranteeing a profound electromagnetic shielding effectiveness of 22-31 dB at 10 GHz in the X-band. Systematic investigations reveal symmetry breaking of VO6 oxygen octahedra in SrVO3 due to the substitution of Sr2+ with larger Ba2+ ions, localization of electrons in the lower energy V-d(yz) and d(zx) orbitals, and stronger correlation effects. The lattice-orbital-charge-coupled engineering of the electronic band structure in correlated metals offers a new design strategy to create super-broad-band transparent conductors with an enhanced shielding capability.