Vanadium Oxide Thin Films Obtained By Thermal Annealing Of Layers Deposited By Rf Magnetron Sputtering At Room Temperature

This chapter describes a new deposition method proposed to achieve Vanadium Oxide VOx/V2O5 thin films with high temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR), intended to be used as functional material in IR microsensors (bolometers). The main aim of the work is to attain a deposition method compatible with the lift-off microstructuring technique in order to avoid the use of a reactive-ion etching (RIE) process step to selectively remove the VOx/V2O5 deposited layer in the course of the definition of the bolometer geometry, preventing the harmful effects linked to the spatial variability and the lack of selectivity of the RIE process. The proposed technique makes use of a two-stage process to produce the well-controlled VOx/V2O5 thin films by applying a suitable thermal annealing to a previously deposited layer, which was obtained before at room temperature by RF magnetron sputtering and patterned by lift-off. A set of measurements has been carried out with thin films attained in order to check the quality and properties of the materials achieved with this method. The results reached with V2O5 pure phase films are consistent with a charge transport model based on the small polarons hopping derived from Mott's model under the Schnakenberg form.