Study of structural and optical properties of nanostructured V2O5 thin films doped with fluorine

In this study, vanadium oxide (V2O5) was doped with different percentages of fluorine (F) and deposited on glass substrates by using spray pyrolysis method. The substrate temperature during the film deposition was kept constant at 450 °C. The obtained nanostructured thin films were characterised by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), UV–visible spectroscopy, and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The XRD results showed that F doped films are polycrystalline with main phase of β-V2O5 and with preferred orientation along (200). Increasing dopant to 30% improved crystallinity, but for more doping, the structure of samples tended to be amorphous. VF2 phase was also observed when doping of F was increased to more than 10%. The incorporation of fluorine in nano-layers led to a decrease in optical absorption by 1.3 a.u. and an increase in band gap of energy from 2.23 to 2.83 eV. SEM images showed that the shape of grains was spherical with 10% doping and changed to bacilliform with 70% F concentration. The cyclic voltammetry results obtained for different samples showed expanded anodic and cathodic peaks for the undoped sample. The samples prepared with 20% and 40% F-doping level had milder anodic and cathodic peaks. However, by increasing the dopant to 70%, the peaks were expanded. The thin film with 40% F-doping showed the least resistance, but the resistance increased dramatically with 70% F dopant concentrations.