Felix E. Fernandez

Vanadium oxide V3O5 exhibits an insulator-to-metal transition (IMT) near 430 K, which is the highest value for all vanadium oxides exhibiting IMTs. This makes it interesting for advanced electronic applications. However, the properties of V3O5 have been little studied, and, in particular, there are no reports of experimentally determined mechanical properties. In this work, Young’s modulus of sputter-deposited V3O5 thin films has been determined by measuring the fundamental resonant frequency of V3O5-coated silicon microcantilevers using a laser beam deflection technique. After deposition, the films were characterized by x-ray diffraction, resistivity measurements, and atomic force microscopy. The value of Young’s modulus experimentally determined for V3O5 was 198 ± 14 GPa, which is slightly lower than the computationally derived values for bulk crystal V3O5.

Picosecond strain pulses are a versatile tool for investigation of mechanical properties of meso- and nano-scale objects with high temporal and spatial resolutions. Generation of such pulses is traditionally realized via ultrafast laser excitation of a light-to-strain transducer involving thermoelastic, deformation potential, or inverse piezoelectric effects. These approaches unavoidably lead to heat dissipation and a temperature rise, which can modify delicate specimens, like biological tissues, and ultimately destroy the transducer itself limiting the amplitude of generated picosecond strain. Here we propose a non-thermal mechanism for generating picosecond strain pulses via ultrafast photo-induced first-order phase transitions (PIPTs). We perform experiments on vanadium dioxide VO₂ films, which exhibit a first-order PIPT accompanied by a lattice change. We demonstrate that during femtosecond optical excitation of VO₂ the PIPT alone contributes to ultrafast expansion of this material as large as 0.45%, which is not accompanied by heat dissipation, and, for excitation density of 8 mJ cm⁻², exceeds the contribution from thermoelastic effect by a factor of five.

Ultrafast transition in V3O5 shows complex dynamics of the surface autocorrelation function. Phase-retrieval algorithms with filtering of stochastic scattering component provide reconstruction of specific/hidden features of photoexcited surface.

Vanadium sesquioxide (V₂O₃) exhibits remarkable property changes through its metal-insulator transition near 150 K and is a very promising candidate for device applications. Thin V₂O₃ films were deposited on SiO₂ glass by reactive DC magnetron sputtering. While resistivity changes over four orders of magnitude were demonstrated, films deposited under nominally identical conditions exhibited significant differences in electrical characteristics, which would hinder reproducibility under deposition techniques appropriate for industrial scale production with standard control features. These differences were attributed to small deviations from exact stoichiometry. A post-deposition thermal treatment consistent with equilibrium temperature and oxygen pressure conditions for V₂O₃ applied to the samples succeeded in nearly equalizing their characteristics within a relatively short time and without negatively impacting the glass substrate or film continuity. Analysis of film structure, morphology, and resistivity measured from room temperature through the metal-insulator transitions, both before and after the thermal process, revealed information about the interplay between non-stoichiometry, residual stress, and electrical characteristics of the films. The approach employed can lead to reproducible results for V₂O₃ films and is applicable to similar materials which exhibit metal-insulator transitions.

Angle-resolved reflection, light scattering and ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy combined with a surface plasmon-polariton (SPP) resonance technique in attenuated total reflection geometry was used to investigate the light-induced plasmonic switching in a photorefractive VO₂/Au hybrid structure. Measurements of SPP scattering and reflection shows that the optically-induced formation of metallic state in a vanadium dioxide layer deposited on a gold film significantly alters the electromagnetic field enhancement and SPP propagation length at the VO₂/Au interface. The ultrafast optical manipulation of SPP resonance is shown on a picosecond timescale. Obtained results demonstrate high potential of photorefractive vanadium oxides as efficient plasmonic modulating materials for ultrafast optoelectronic devices.