Thin film bi-epitaxy and transition characteristics of TiO2/TiN buffered VO2 on Si(100) substrates

Abstract

ABSTRACTBi-epitaxial VO2 thin films with [011] out-of-plane orientation were integrated with Si(100) substrates through TiO2/TiN buffer layers. At the first step, TiN is grown epitaxially on Si(100), where a cube-on-cube epitaxy is achieved. Then, TiN was oxidized in-situ ending up having epitaxial r-TiO2. Finally, VO2 was deposited on top of TiO2. The alignment across the interfaces was stablished as VO2(011)║TiO2(110)║TiN(100)║Si(100) and VO2(110) /VO2(010)║TiO2(011)║TiN(112)║Si(112). The inter-planar spacing of VO2(010) and TiO2(011) equal to 2.26 and 2.50 Å, respectively. This results in a 9.78% tensile misfit strain in VO2(010) lattice which relaxes through 9/10 alteration domains with a frequency factor of 0.5, according to the domain matching epitaxy paradigm. Also, the inter-planar spacing of VO2(011) and TiO2(011) equals to 3.19 and 2.50 Å, respectively. This results in a 27.6% compressive misfit strain in VO2(011) lattice which relaxes through 3/4 alteration domains with a frequency factor of 0.57. We studied semiconductor to metal transition characteristics of VO2/TiO2/TiN/Si heterostructures and established a correlation between intrinsic defects and magnetic properties.