In this work, the results of fabricating ultra thin VO2 films on the technologically relevant amorphous SiO2 surface using reactive DC magnetron sputtering are presented. Results indicate that a post deposition anneal in low partial pressures of oxygen is an effective way at stabilizing the VO2(M1) phase on the SiO2 surface. VO2 films with a thickness of 42nm show a continuous microstructure, and undergo a resistivity change of more than a factor of 200 as the temperature of the film increases above 72oC. The film shows hysteresis in the metal-insulator transition temperature upon heating and cooling with a width of approximately 8oC. The resistivity of the low temperature semiconducting phase is found to be thermally activated with an activation energy 0.16±0.03 ev. Stress measurements using X-ray diffraction indicate that the ultra thin VO2 film has a large tensile stress of 2.0±0.2 GPa. This value agrees well with the calculated thermal stress due to differential thermal expansion between the VO2 thin film and silicon substrate. The stress leads to a shift of the metal-insulator transition temperature by approximately 4oC.
@article{arxiv.1608.03911,
title = {Growth of ultra thin vanadium dioxide thin films using magnetron sputtering},
author = {Fangfang Song and B. E. White},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.03911},
year = {2016}
}