Influence of oxygen flow rate on metal–insulator transition of vanadium oxide thin films grown by RF magnetron sputtering

• Published in: Applied physics. A, Materials science & processing Materials science & processing, 2017-03, Vol.123 (3), p.1-6, Article 162
• Main Authors: Ma, Xu, Liu, Xinkun, Li, Haizhu, Zhang, Angran, Huang, Mingju
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied physics; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Condensed Matter Physics; Field emission microscopy; Flow velocity; High temperature; Hysteresis loops; Machines; Magnetron sputtering; Manufacturing; Materials science; Metal-insulator transition; Nanotechnology; Optical and Electronic Materials; Oxygen; Phase transitions; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Processes; Radio frequency; Silicon substrates; Surfaces and Interfaces; Temperature; Thin Films; Transition temperature; Vanadium oxides; X-ray diffraction
• ISSN: 0947-8396; 1432-0630
• DOI: 10.1007/s00339-017-0779-7

High-quality vanadium oxide ( V O 2 ) films have been fabricated on Si (111) substrates by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering deposition method. The sheet resistance of V O 2 has a significant change (close to 5 orders of magnitude) in the process of the metal–insulator phase transition (MIT). The field emission-scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) results show the grain size of V O 2 thin films is larger with the increase of oxygen flow. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) results indicate the thin films fabricated at different oxygen flow rates grow along the (011) crystalline orientation. As the oxygen flow rate increases from 3 sccm to 6 sccm, the phase transition temperature of the films reduces from 341 to 320 K, the width of the thermal hysteresis loop decreases from 32 to 9 K. The thin films fabricated in the condition of 5 sccm have a high temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) −3.455%/K with a small resistivity of 2.795 ρ/Ω cm.