Transparent conductors—nearly an oxymoron—are in pressing demand, as ultrathin-film technologies become ubiquitous commodities. With current solutions relying on nonabundant elements, it has recently been suggested that perovskites—such as $\mathrm{Sr}\mathrm{V}{\mathrm{O}}_3$ and $\mathrm{Sr}\mathrm{Nb}{\mathrm{O}}_3$—could serve as next generation transparent conductors. In these, strong electronic correlations push the plasma frequency below the visible spectrum to curtail absorption. Our ab initio calculations and analytical insights establish, however, that the required effective mass enhancement unavoidably comes at a price: An increased scattering that causes substantial optical absorption above the plasma edge. We circumvent this dilemma and identify high-grade perovskite transparent conductors, relying on an interplay of hole doping, larger bandwidths, separation of bands, but only mild mass enhancements.

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• Optical conductivity
• Band structure methods
• Dynamical mean field theory