Bidirectional laser triggering in highly-resistive vanadium-dioxide thin films by using a 966-nm pump laser diode

Abstract

By incorporating a 966-nm pump laser diode, we realized bidirectional laser triggering in a twoterminal planar device based on a highly-resistive vanadium-dioxide (VO2) thin film grown by using the pulsed laser deposition method. Bidirectional laser triggering of up to 10 mA was achieved by directly illuminating the VO2 film with a focused infrared laser beam, and the transient responses of the laser-triggered currents were analyzed. A switching contrast between the off-state and the on-state currents was measured as ∼3571, and the rising and the falling times were measured as ∼40 and ∼20 ms, respectively, when laser pulses with a pulse width of 100 ms excited the VO2-based device.