Decreasing the scale of vanadium dioxide (VO₂) structures is one of the ways to enhance the switching speed of the material. We study the properties of VO₂ films of altered thicknesses in the range of 20–170$$nm prepared on c-sapphire substrates with a TiO₂ sublayer by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) method. The synthesis regime to design a TiO₂ film was preliminarily optimized based on XRD data. XRD patterns reveal an epitaxial growth of the VO₂ films with distortion of the monoclinic cell to hexagonal symmetry. The positions of the lattice vibration modes in Raman spectra are similar to those in bulk VO₂ when the film thickness is greater than $\sim 30$$$nm. For VO₂ films thicker that $\sim 20$$$nm,a lattice strain results in the modes’ positions and intensity change. However,the electrically triggered transition in a $\sim 50$$$nm thick VO₂ film reveals forward and reverse switching times as short as 20$$ns and 400$$ns,correspondingly.