Ambiguous Role of Growth-Induced Defects on the Semiconductor-to-Metal Characteristics in Epitaxial VO/TiO Thin Films.

Controlling the semiconductor-to-metal transition temperature in epitaxial VO thin films remains an unresolved question both at the fundamental as well as the application level. Within the scope of this work, the effects of growth temperature on the structure, chemical composition, interface coherency and electrical characteristics of rutile VO epitaxial thin films grown on TiO substrates are investigated. It is hereby deduced that the transition temperature is lower than the bulk value of 340 K. However, it is found to approach this value as a function of increased growth temperature even though it is accompanied by a contraction along the V-V bond direction, the crystallographic c-axis lattice parameter. Additionally, it is demonstrated that films grown at low substrate temperatures exhibit a relaxed state and a strongly reduced transition temperature. It is suggested that, besides thermal and epitaxial strain, growth-induced defects may strongly affect the electronic phase transition. The results of this work reveal the difficulty in extracting the intrinsic material response to strain, when the exact contribution of all strain sources cannot be effectively determined. The findings also bear implications on the limitations in obtaining the recently predicted novel semi-Dirac point phase in VO/TiO multilayer structures.