Epitaxial Growth of V2O3 Thin Films on c-Plane Al2O3 in Reactive Sputtering and Its Transformation to VO2 Films by Post Annealing

Abstract

Epitaxial growth of thin vanadium sesquioxide (V2O3) films on c-plane sapphire (c-Al2O3) substrates was achieved with reactive magnetron sputtering under restricted oxygen flow. Even with a film thickness of approximately 12 nm, highly c-axis textured growth of corundum V2O3 was realized because of the smaller mismatch of V2O3 against corundum Al2O3. Post annealing in O2 atmosphere for as-grown V2O3 films caused phase transformation to oxidized crystalline phases. At a moderate annealing temperature of 450 °C, the V2O3 thin films transformed to VO2 films, which show a resistivity change of over three orders of magnitude. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy spectra for the annealed VO2 film showed a single charge state of V4+, indicating a homogeneous crystalline structure, in contrast to the inhomogeneous feature with mixed charge states of V in addition to V3+ for as-grown V2O3 film. This method is promising to prepare thin VO2 films with metal–insulator transition in productive reactive sputtering and to examine crystalline phase transformation mechanisms, including phase coexistence.