Fabricate and Investigate the Physical Properties of Anatase-TiO2 Thin Films and Freestanding Membranes for Device Application

Abstract

Titanium oxide (TiO2) is one of the most widely studied dioxides as its specific surface properties, which makes it an ideal candidate for pollutant reducing and water splitting. TiO2 thin film has gained an increasing concern for transparent electrodes, photovoltaic application and resistive switching memory devices. Research for the highly reduced TiO2 thin film for transparent electrodes has been conducted in some research groups; however, the cost and technology present a challenge to the widespread use of TiO2 transparent electrodes. As an n-type semiconductor, TiO2 has been recognized as an ideal switching interlayer in resistive switching memory. The new challenge derived from Moore’s crisis and von Neuman architecture present obstacles to the further improvement of computer performance. Memristor, as its in-memory computing, can be applied in the next generation computer to reduce the cost and increase operational efficiency. Furthermore, till now, fabrication freestanding TiO2 with a near 100% stable (001) anatase surface is still a challenge. In this research thesis, I firstly reported a convenient way to produce highly conductive TiO2 thin film that can be used to replace ITO and FTO for the transparent electrode application. Subsequently, a TiO2/Nb: STO memristor was fabricated to realize the high-density data storage, arithmetic logical operation and neuromorphic computing, and then a state-of-the-art method was introduced to fabricate freestanding anatase TiO2 thin film with near 100% (001) surface.