Structure and transport properties of titanium oxide (Ti2O, TiO1+, and Ti3O5) thin films

摘要： Titanium oxides have partially filled or empty d orbital and are stable at various oxidation states with different structures and unique properties. Here, three kinds of titanium oxide thin films of hexagonal Ti2O metal, cubic TiO1+d superconductor, and monoclinic g-Ti3O5 semiconductor, were successfully grown on a-Al2O3 substrates by a pulsed laser deposition technique, through ablating a pure titanium target under different oxygen pressures. The electrical resistivities of these films increase with increasing oxygen content. The metallic behaviors of Ti bulk and Ti2O film can be described by the Bloch-Grüneisen formula, and the semiconducting behaviors of TiO1+d films in normal state and g-Ti3O5 film obey the variable range hopping and the small polaron hopping conduction mechanisms, respectively. For titanium monoxide TiO1+d (1.05 ≤ 1+d ≤ 1.17) films, increasing oxygen content is accompanied by an increase of disorder, a decrease of electron density of states at the Fermi level, and an enhancement of carrier localization, leading to a suppression of superconductivity.