Nanocrystalline vanadium dioxide (VO2) thin films were grown on glass substrates by using reactive direct current magnetron sputtering and in situ thermal treatments at low preparation temperatures (<= 350 degrees C). The VO2 thin films were characterized by grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscope, transmission electron microscopy and spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE). The semiconductor-metal transition (SMT) characteristics of the films were investigated by four-point probe resistivity measurements and infrared spectrometer equipped with heating pads. The testing results showed that the crystal structure, morphology, grain size and semiconductor-metal transition temperature (T-SMT) significantly changed as the film thickness decreased. Multilayer structures were observed in the particles of thinner films whose average particle size is much larger than the film thickness and average VO2 grain size. A competition mechanism between the suppression effect of decreased thickness and coalescence of nanograins was proposed to understand the film growth and the formation of multilayer structure. The value of T-SMT was found to decrease as average VO2 grain size became smaller, and SE results showed that small nanograin size significantly affected the electronic structure of VO2 film. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.