Investigation on vanadium oxide thin films deposited by spray pyrolysis technique

Abstract

Vanadium oxide thin films were deposited at 400 °C by spray pyrolysis technique using 0.1 M aqueous precursor solution of ammonium meta vanadate (AMV) with two different pH values. X-ray diffraction results showed that the film prepared using aqueous precursor AMV solution (solution A; pH 7) is amorphous in nature and the film prepared by adding HNO3 in the AMV aqua solution A (solution B; pH 3) is polycrystalline in nature. Vanadium oxide film prepared from the precursor solution B is in the mixed phases of V2O5 and V4O7. Crystallinity is improved for the film prepared using solution B when compared to film prepared from solution A. Crystallite size, strain and dislocation density calculated for the film prepared from solution B is respectively 72.1 nm, 0.4554 × 10−3 lin.−2m−4 and 1.7263 × 1014 lin.m−2. Morphology study revealed that the size of the flakes formed on the surface of the films is influenced by the pH of the precursor solution. Average Visible Transmittance and maximum transmittance of the deposited films exceed 70% and the direct optical band gap value calculated for the films deposited from A and B solution is 1.91 eV and 2.08 eV respectively.