Control of Multilevel Resistance in Vanadium Dioxide by Electric Field Using Hybrid Dielectrics

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2017 Apr 19;9(15):13571-13576. doi: 10.1021/acsami.6b16424. Epub 2017 Apr 6.

Abstract

We investigate the effect of electric field on VO2 back-gated field effect transistor (FET) devices. Using hybrid dielectric layers, we demonstrate the highest resistance modulation on the order of 102 in VO2 at a positive gate bias of 80 V (1.6 MV/cm). VO2 FET devices are prepared on SiO2 substrates of different thicknesses (100-300 nm) and hybrid dielectric layers of Al2O3/SiO2 (500 nm). For thicknesses less than 300 nm, no electric-field effects are observed, whereas for a 300 nm thickness, a small decrease in resistance is observed under a 0.2 MV/cm electric field. Under the electrostatic effect, the carrier concentration increases in VO2 devices, decreasing the resistance and the transition temperature from 66.75 to 64 °C. The leakage analysis shows that the interface quality of VO2 films on hybrid dielectric layers can be further improved. These studies suggest a multilevel fast resistance switching with the electric field and give an insight into the gate-source leakage current, which limits the phase transition in VO2 in an electric field.

Keywords: Mott transistor; electric field; hybrid dielectric; insulator−metal transition; vanadium dioxide.