Vanadium dioxide thin film with low phase transition temperature deposited on borosilicate glass substrate

Abstract A nanostructured vanadium dioxide (VO 2 ) thin film showing a low metal-insulator transition temperature of 30 °C has been fabricated through reactive ion beam sputtering followed by thermal annealing. The thin film was grown on borosilicate glass substrate at the temperature of 280 °C with a Si 3 N 4 buffer layer. Both scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy images have been taken to investigate the configuration of VO 2 thin film. The average height of the crystallite is 20 nm and the grain size ranges from 40 nm to 100 nm. The transmittance measured from low to high temperatures also reveals that the film possesses excellent switching property in infrared light at critical transition temperature, with switching efficiency of 52% at 2600 nm. This experiment paves the way of VO 2 thin film's application in smart windows.