Effects of energetic substrate-incident ions on the growth of crystalline vanadium dioxide films in inductively coupled plasma-assisted sputtering

Abstract

We report on the effects of energetic ions incident to a substrate on the growth of vanadium dioxide (VO2) films on conductive layers by inductively coupled plasma (ICP)-assisted sputtering (ICPS). Ion energy distributions (IEDs) of Ar+ were measured using an electrostatic energy analyzer consisting of three meshed plates. Ions with kinetic energies up to 150 eV with peak positions corresponding to the plasma space potential were observed in ICP-assisted sputtering, in contrast with lower energies in conventional sputtering. Crystalline VO2 films with an insulator-to-metal transition (IMT) exhibiting resistance change over 2 orders of magnitudes at around 70 °C were successfully grown on conductive layers of titanium (Ti) and indium tin oxide (ITO) even at a low substrate temperature of 250 °C. Characteristic IMTs with multistep abrupt changes and hysteresis width of around 30 °C were first realized for polycrystalline VO2 film with the M2 phase grown on ITO layers on glass substrates. Through the analyses of surface morphology and stress states, we elucidated that high-energy ion irradiation strongly assists the low-temperature (<250 °C) crystalline growth of VO2, while it is, at the same time, accompanied by high growth stress.