Study on the Grain Size of Vanadium Dioxide Thin Films using Sol-gel Spin Coating Method

Vanadium dioxide (VO2) is a dark blue inorganic compound and excellent material with a high potential for smart window application due to its characteristic. A research to study the effect of different rotation per minutes (rpm) of spin coater on VO2 thin films was conducted. A suitable precursor was formed by mixed a vanadium oxytripropoxide with isopropanol into the clean beaker and mixed slowly. Part of the process, spin coater and heat treatment were used to form a thin layer of VO2 on ten pieces of quartz substrates by applied a standard operation set up. The samples then were characterized by Field Emission Scanning Electron Spectroscopy (FESEM) for thickness measurement via cross section process and surface morphology of the grains. The range of measured thickness and size of grain were 520nm to 1960nm and 300nm to 349nm respectively. The results shown that, the quality of the fabricated VO2 in terms of thickness and surface morphology were inversely proportional with rpm of the spin coater.