Effect of annealing on Resistive Switching properties of GLAD assisted WO₃ thin films

Present work reports the impact of post deposition annealing on the resistive switching behavior of rf magnetron sputtered WO₃ nanostructured thin films. The films were deposited under GLAD configuration of sputtering at varying GLAD angle from 65^o to 80^o. Structure transition from monoclinic to orthorhombic phase in deposited WO₃ films was perceived after ex‐situ annealing at a temperature of 400 ^oC. Resistive Switching properties show a shift from bipolar to unipolar switching on post deposition annealing. The WO₃ nanostructured thin films show the unipolar switching behavior after ex‐situ annealing for all the prepared samples. The value of resistance in high resistance state (HRS) was lowered after ex‐situ heating treatment and interestingly the switching voltage also reduced to 3V from 7V after annealing treatment. The ratio of high to low resistance state for annealed WO₃ film fabricated at 70^o GLAD angle was achieved to be maximum ( ̴ 219). A detailed charge transport mechanism shows that the ohmic behavior is the dominant current conduction mechanism at lower applied voltage while SCLC and Child’s law are dominant at higher applied voltages. The obtained results encourages the utilization of prepared WO₃ thin film samples towards a wide variety of applications in optoelectronics, microelectronics, selective catalytic and environmental engineering along with the advanced electronics such as the resistive memory devices.

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.