Abstract
Stoichiometric vanadium dioxide in bulk, thin film and nanostructured forms exhibits an insulator-to-metal transition (IMT) accompanied by a structural phase transformation, induced by temperature, light, electric fields, doping or strain. We have grown epitaxial films of vanadium dioxide on c-plane (0001) of sapphire using two different procedures involving (1) room temperature growth followed by annealing and (2) direct high temperature growth. Strain at the film-substrate interface due to growth at different temperatures leads to interesting differences in morphologies and phase transition characteristics. Comparison of the morphologies and switching characteristics of the two films shows that contrary to conventional wisdom, the room-temperature grown films have smoother, more continuous morphologies and better switching performance, consistent with the behavior of epitaxially grown semiconductors.
