Structural, Raman, four probe conductivity, Hall and magnetoresistance studies on phase pure tetragonal PtO stabilized as thin films

A highly crystalline tetragonal PtO not reported in phase diagrams is stabilized as a thin film in the narrow temperature window of 673–723 K under the in-situ oxygen partial pressure of 2 × 10 –1 mbar using pulsed laser deposition. Raman spectra confirm the formation of PtO without any amorphous content or impurities. Our results show that PtO is a semiconductor in accordance with most of the theoretical predictions and not metallic. The room temperature conductivity and mobility of PtO are about 3.24 × 10 2 S cm −1 and 1.6 cm 2 V −1 s −1 respectively. Hall studies confirm p-type conductivity with a carrier concentration of about 1.2 × 10 21 cm −3 which is about three orders of magnitude higher than the value reported hitherto. XPS studies show that the majority of Pt exists as Pt 2+ along with a small fraction of Pt 4+ . The experimental result validates the theoretical work that predicts a semiconducting behaviour for PtO.