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It is well known that vanadium oxide can take many different forms. However for this
study, only the amorphous phase was investigated. Amorphous vanadium oxide (VOx ) thin films
were deposited on thermally grown silicon dioxide by DC magnetron sputtering using a
vanadium metal target in an argon / oxygen atmosphere. The driving force of this study was to
investigate the temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) and low resistivity in the amorphous
films. Sheet resistance is very sensitive to small changes in temperature, making amorphous VOx
very attractive to thermal sensor applications such as infrared detectors.
To form the vanadium oxide, physical vapor deposition of vanadium metal at 200 Watts
of DC power was used with varied amounts of oxygen in a primary argon atmosphere. During
deposition, the concentration of oxygen was controlled by using a 20:80 mixture of O2 and Ar in
conjunction with high purity Ar supply. Flow control techniques were derived and calculated to
predict the percentage of oxygen before and during deposition to understand the reaction
between the vanadium metal and oxygen. Concentrations of O2 in the deposition chamber were
varied from 0.025% to 3.000% with the purpose of gaining an understanding of the affects of O2
concentration in amorphous VOx films. TCR and resistivity measurements were performed to
characterize the films. The results showed a resistivity decrement with decreasing oxygen
concentration. The films with lower concentrations of oxygen were found to have better TCR
values then those with higher percentages of oxygen
To further reduce the resistivity of the VOx and maintain the TCR value, co-sputtering of
noble metals (gold and platinum) with VOx was studied. The metals were co-sputtered at various
power settings with the vanadium oxide reactive process at a fixed percentage of oxygen. The TCR and resistivity results showed that the additions of Au and Pt into VOx reduced the
resistivity. However, only Au was found to improve TCR value.
The results