Electrical Switching in Semiconductor-Metal Self-Assembled VO(2) Disordered Metamaterial Coatings

As a strongly correlated metal oxide, VO(2) inspires several highly technological applications. The challenging reliable wafer-scale synthesis of high quality polycrystalline VO(2) coatings is demonstrated on 4” Si taking advantage of the oxidative sintering of chemically vapor deposited VO(2) films. This approach results in films with a semiconductor-metal transition (SMT) quality approaching that of the epitaxial counterpart. SMT occurs with an abrupt electrical resistivity change exceeding three orders of magnitude with a narrow hysteresis width. Spatially resolved infrared and Raman analyses evidence the self-assembly of VO(2) disordered metamaterial, compresing monoclinic (M1 and M2) and rutile (R) domains, at the transition temperature region. The M2 mediation of the M1-R transition is spatially confined and related to the localized strain-stabilization of the M2 phase. The presence of the M2 phase is supposed to play a role as a minor semiconducting phase far above the SMT temperature. In terms of application, we show that the VO(2) disordered self-assembly of M and R phases is highly stable and can be thermally triggered with high precision using short heating or cooling pulses with adjusted strengths. Such a control enables an accurate and tunable thermal control of the electrical switching.