Improvement of electrical and optical properties of molybdenum oxide thin films by ultralow pressure sputtering method

In this work, we investigated the structural, electrical and optical properties of molybdenum oxide thin films deposited by the reactive dc magnetron sputtering method. The molybdenum oxide films were prepared at sputtering pressures ranging from 6.7 × 10−1 to 6.7 × 10−2 Pa. In order to promote their electrical conductivity, all the deposited MoOx films were annealed in Ar ambient at 450 °C for 8 h. The resistivity of the MoOx films varied from 10−4 to 10−2 Ω cm depending on the O2 content in the sputtering ambient. The lowering of the resistivity of the MoO2 films was mainly attributed to the formation of a monoclinic MoO2 polycrystalline phase. As the sputtering pressure decreased, the content of monoclinic polycrystalline MoO2 phase increased, resulting in low resistivity films. The formation of the dominant MoO2 phase at lower sputtering pressures was attributed to the stress induced crystallization. The post-deposition annealed (PDA) MoOx film, deposited at an ultralow sputtering pressure (6.7 × 10−2 Pa) and O2 content of 40%, had an atomic ratio of O to Mo ≈ 2.85 and was highly transparent and conductive: the transmittance in the visible wavelength range of 400–500 nm was about 73% and the resistivity was 1.05 × 10−3 Ω cm. This result is superior to those of MoOx films epitaxially grown by the pulse laser deposition method.