Evidence of the semiconductor-metal transition in V2O5 thin films by the pulsed laser photoacoustic method

In this work, the pulsed photoacoustic technique was used to investigate the semiconductor-metal transition of thin vanadium pentoxide films (V2O5) under increasing temperature. The V2O5 thin films were simultaneously deposited by RF magnetron sputtering at room temperature, on corning glass and SnO2:F/glass substrates, in order to compare the photoacoustic response. The elemental and structural analysis of the V2O5 films was performed by Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. The optical transmission and band gap were determined using UV-Vis spectroscopy. The electrical properties were measured using four-point probe measurements with the Van der Pauw geometry.