Excess noise and thermoelectric effect in magnetron-sputtered VO2 thin films

This work presents the excess noise and thermoelectric (Seebeck) measurements on polycrystalline vanadium dioxide (VO2) thin films. Noise spectral power density (SPD) of current fluctuations in the semiconducting (SC) phase had a typical flicker noise (f(-gamma)) characteristic with an average slope parameter gamma of 1.13. Normalized SPD (S-n) values obtained in the SC-phase indicate that the noise originates in the bulk of the film. On the contrary, in the metallic (M)-phase, gamma values were greater than unity, and the observed Sn values indicated that the origin of the noise is most likely from the contacts or surface rather than the bulk. A general decrease was observed in S-n by a factor of 4-5 from the SC- to M-phase. Moreover, S-n in the SC-phase showed no temperature dependence. An interpretation based on the number of charge carrier fluctuations in Hooge's model led to an unrealistically high Hooge parameter and had to be ruled out. We propose that the fluctuations are related to the mobility fluctuations of carriers arising primarily from grain-boundary scattering which explains the observed characteristics well. The Seebeck coefficients (S) obtained under both heating and cooling schedules showed the n-type nature of magnetron-sputtered VO2 films in the SC-phase. Differently, in the M-phase, the S value was positive. The S values obtained from the cooling schedule signified the low percolation threshold of the metal-to-insulator transition already demonstrated for VO2 thin films grown on r-cut sapphire using the Efros-Shklovskii percolation model.