VO2 Films by Polymer-Assisted Deposition: Investigation of Thermal Decomposition of Precursor Gel and Control of Phase Transition Temperatures

Abstract

Polymer-assisted deposition (PAD) can be employed to prepare metal oxide films by coordination between metal ions and polymers instead of hydrolysis and condensation reactions, providing a cheap and scalable alternative for sol-gel process. This work involves a TG/DTA-MS study on the thermal decomposition of the precursor gel to form VO2 films. The results show that polymers influence effectively the achievement of thermochromic VO2, supporting the film-forming mechanism we proposed in a previous work. W-doping shifted the MIT temperature from 58 to 33 °C while remained 73% of the modulating ability in infrared transmittance at 2000 nm.