Thickness-modulated thermochromism of vanadium dioxide thin films grown by magnetron sputtering

Abstract Vanadium dioxide (VO 2 ) films were prepared on soda-lime glass by direct current magnetron sputtering at 320 °C. Effects of film thickness on the microstructure, surface morphology and thermochromic performance of VO 2 films were investigated. X-ray diffraction showed that the deposited films have strong preferred orientation of VO 2 (011) lattice when the film thickness higher than 102 nm. The calculated grain sizes of VO 2 films increased from 16.05 nm to 34.56 nm continuously with the increasing of film thickness. UV/VIS/NIR spectrophotometer showed that the visible transmittance deceased while the infrared transmittance switching efficiency increased as the film thickness increased from 79 nm to 264 nm. Additionally, the optical band gaps of VO 2 films were in a range of 1.15 eV–1.40 eV, and the thicker film exhibited the smaller value. Moreover, the results of measured temperature-dependent electrical resistivity of these VO 2 films showed that the phase-transition temperature is in a range of 53–60 °C, which is much lower than that of single-crystal VO 2 (68 °C). With the film thickness increasing, the metal–semiconductor phase transition becomes more obvious. Overall, films with thickness in the range of 80–100 nm showed comparatively relatively balanced combination of visible transmittance and solar switching efficiency.