Vanadium sesquioxide (V2O3)-based semiconducting temperature sensitive resistors for uncooled microbolometers

Abstract

This paper reports on a semiconducting resistor material based on vanadium sesquioxide (V2O3) with electrical resistivity and temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) appropriate for microbolometer applications. In this work, V2O3-based semiconducting resistor material was synthesized and electrically characterized. The developed material was prepared by annealing, in O2 and N2 atmospheres, a cascaded multilayer structure composed of V2O3 (10 nm) and V (5 nm) room temperature sputter coated thin films. The developed 55 nm thin film microbolometer resistor material possessed high temperature sensitivity from 20[Formula: see text]C to 45[Formula: see text]C with a TCR of −3.68%/[Formula: see text]C and room temperature resistivity of 0.57 [Formula: see text] for O2 annealed samples and a TCR of −3.72%/[Formula: see text]C and room temperature resistivity of 0.72 [Formula: see text] for N2 annealed samples. The surface morphologies of the synthesized thin films were studied using atomic force microscopy showing no significant post-growth annealing effect on the smoothness of the samples surfaces.