Materials Design using Correlated Oxides: Optical Properties of Vanadium Dioxide

Abstract

Materials with strong electronic Coulomb interactions play an increasing role in modern materials applications. "Thermochromic" systems, which exhibit thermally induced changes in their optical response, provide a particularly interesting case. The optical switching associated with the metal-insulator transition of vanadium dioxide (VO2), for example, has been proposed for use in "intelligent" windows, which selectively filter radiative heat in hot weather conditions. In this work, we develop the theoretical tools for describing such a behavior. Using a novel scheme for the calculation of the optical conductivity of correlated materials, we obtain quantitative agreement with experiments for both phases of VO2. On the example of an optimized energy-saving window setup, we further demonstrate that theoretical materials design has now come into reach, even for the particularly challenging class of correlated electron systems.

4+x pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Mott transition in VO2 revealed by infrared spectroscopy and nano-imaging
• Correlated metallic state of vanadium dioxide
• Effective band-structure in the insulating phase versus strong dynamical correlations in metallic VO2
• Role of electron-electron and electron-phonon interaction effect in the optical conductivity of VO2
• Quasiparticle evolution and pseudogap formation in V2O3: An infrared spectroscopy study
• Multi-orbital Effects in Optical Properties of Vanadium Sesquioxide
• Cluster model calculations with non-local screening channels of metallic and insulating VO2
• Optical response of metallic and insulating VO2 calculated with the LDA approach

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Electrodynamics of Correlated Electron Materials
• Optical properties of correlated materials -- Generalized Peierls approach and its application to VO2
• Rare-Earth vs. Heavy Metal Pigments and their Colors from First Principles
• Optical Properties of Correlated Materials -- or Why Intelligent Windows may look Dirty