10.6 μm Infrared light photoinduced insulator-to-metal transition in vanadium dioxide

Vanadium dioxide has excellent phase transition characteristic. Before or after phase transition, its optical, electrical, magnetic characteristic hangs hugely. It has a wide application prospect in many areas. Now, the light which can make vanadium dioxide come to pass photoinduced phase transition range from soft X-ray to medium infrared light (6.9 mu m, 180 meV). However, whether 10.6 mu m (117 meV) long wave infrared light can make vanadium dioxide generate photoinduced phase transition has been not studied. In this paper, we researched the response characteristic of vanadium dioxide excited by 10.6 mu m infrared light. We prepared the vanadium dioxide and test the changes of vanadium dioxide thin film's transmittance to 632.8 nm infrared light when the thin film is irradiate by CO2 laser. We also test the resistivity of vanadium dioxide. Excluding the effect of thermal induced phase transition, we find that the transmittance of vanadium dioxide thin film to 632.8 nm light and resistivity both changes when irradiating by 10.6 mu m laser. This indicates that 10.6 mu m infrared light can make the vanadium dioxide come to pass photoinduced phase transition. The finding makes vanadium has a potential application in recording the long-wave infrared hologram and making infrared detector with high resolution. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.