The Potential Applications of W- and Mo-Doped VO<sub>2</sub> Nanobelts to the Functional Packaging Materials

Abstract

The first–order metal–sinsulator phase transition in VO2 is characterized by an ultrafast several orders of magnitude change in optical transmittance and electrical conductivity, which makes VO2 an attractive candidate for the potential application in thermochromic coatings and functional packaging materials. Herein, W– and Mo–doped VO2 nanobelts were successfully synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method. The as–obtained products were characterized by X–ray powder diffraction (XRD), X–ray photoelecton spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT–IR). The results revealed that W or Mo atoms were successfully doped into the crystal lattice of VO2 matrix. It was found that the phase transition temperature of doped VO2 could be simply tuned by changing the doping concentration of W or Mo atoms. Furthermore, the variable–temperature infrared spectra disclosed that the doped VO2(M) had novel optical switching properties, indicating that the as–obtained products can be used as the intelligent packaging materials.