VO2 is an attractive candidate as a transition metal oxide switching material as a selection device for reduction of sneak-path current. We demonstrate deposition of nanoscale VO2 thin films via thermal atomic layer deposition (ALD) with H2O reactant. Using this method, we demonstrate VO2 thin films with high-quality characteristics, including crystallinity, reproducibility using X-ray diffraction, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurement. We also present a method that can increase uniformity and thin film quality by splitting the pulse cycle into two using scanning electron microscope measurement. We demonstrate an ON / OFF ratio of about 40, which is caused by metal insulator transition (MIT) of VO2 thin film. ALDdeposited VO2 films with high film uniformity can be applied to next-generation nonvolatile memory devices with high density due to their metal-insulator transition characteristic with high current density, fast switching speed, and high ON / OFF ratio.
This work was supported by the Nano Material Technology Development Program (2014M3A7B4049367) through the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), Korea.