Effect of substrate and growth method on vanadium dioxide thin films by RF magnetron sputtering: Vanadium metal oxidation vs reactive sputtering
Abstract
Vanadium dioxide (VO2) undergoes a metal–insulator phase transition at ∼70 °C and has attracted substantial interest for potential applications in electronics, including those in neuromorphic computing. The vanadium–oxygen system has a rather complicated phase diagram, and controlling the stoichiometry and the phase of thin films of vanadium oxides is a well-known challenge. We explore the novel combination of two methods of VO2 thin film deposition using off-axis RF magnetron sputtering on (100)- and (111)-oriented yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) substrates: reactive sputtering of vanadium in an oxygen environment and sputtering of vanadium metal followed by oxidation to VO2. Interestingly, the reactive sputtering process on both substrate orientations yields the metastable semiconducting VO2 (B) phase, which is structurally stabilized by the YSZ surface. The metal sputtering and oxidation process on YSZ produces mainly the equilibrium monoclinic (or M1) phase of VO2 that exhibits a metal–insulator transition. Using this method, we obtained thin films of (010)-textured polycrystalline VO2 (M1) that show a metal–insulator transition with an on/off ratio larger than 1000.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jul 06, 2023
- Source ID
- 10.1063/5.0150898
Entities
People
- Adam Christensen
- Agham Posadas
- Albert Alec Talin
- Alexander A Demkov
- Brian Zutter
- Patrick Sean Finnegan
- S. Bhullar
- Sean R. Bishop
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Sandia National Laboratories
- University of Texas at Austin