Metal-insulator transition in vanadium dioxide nanobeams: probing sub-domain properties of strongly correlated materials

Abstract

Many strongly correlated electronic materials, including high-temperature superconductors, colossal magnetoresistance and metal-insulator-transition (MIT) materials, are inhomogeneous on a microscopic scale as a result of domain structure or compositional variations. An important potential advantage of nanoscale samples is that they exhibit the homogeneous properties, which can differ greatly from those of the bulk. We demonstrate this principle using vanadium dioxide, which has domain structure associated with its dramatic MIT at 68 degrees C. Our studies of single-domain vanadium dioxide nanobeams reveal new aspects of this famous MIT, including supercooling of the metallic phase by 50 degrees C; an activation energy in the insulating phase consistent with the optical gap; and a connection between the transition and the equilibrium carrier density in the insulating phase. Our devices also provide a nanomechanical method of determining the transition temperature, enable measurements on individual metal-insulator interphase walls, and allow general investigations of a phase transition in quasi-one-dimensional geometry.

9 pages, 3 figures, original submitted in June 2008

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Cited by in corpus (25)

• Strain engineering and one-dimensional organization of metal-insulator domains in single-crystal VO2 beams
• Measurement of a solid-state triple point at the metal-insulator transition in VO2
• Strongly Correlated Materials
• Nanoscale imaging of the electronic and structural transitions in vanadium dioxide
• Passive radiative "thermostat" enabled by phase-change photonic nanostructures
• Ultrafast mid-infrared nanoscopy of strained vanadium dioxide nanobeams
• Current oscillations in Vanadium Dioxide: evidence for electrically triggered percolation avalanches
• Field-effect modulation of conductance in VO2 nanobeam transistors with HfO2 as the gate dielectric
• Metal-insulator transition through a semi-Dirac point in oxide nanostructures: VO${}_2$ (001) layers confined within TiO${}_2$
• Temperature and Voltage Driven Tunable Metal-Insulator Transition in Individual $W_x{V}_{1-x}{O}_2$ nanowires
• Programmable Mechanical Resonances in MEMS by Localized Joule Heating of Phase Change Materials
• Anisotropic Infrared Response of Vanadium Dioxide Microcrystals
• A hybrid optoelectronic Mott insulator
• Highly repeatable nanoscale phase coexistence in vanadium dioxide films
• Separating electric field and thermal effects across the metal-insulator transition in vanadium oxide nanobeams
• Ion beam synthesis of nanothermochromic diffraction gratings with giant switching contrast at telecom wavelengths
• Correlating the Energetics and Atomic Motions of the Metal-Insulator Transition of M1 Vanadium Dioxide
• Synthesis of V${}_2$O${}_3$ Nanoplates
• Visualization of one-dimensional diffusion and spontaneous segregation of hydrogen in single crystals of VO2
• Emergence of Competing Stripe Phase near the Mott Transition in Ti-doped Bilayer Calcium Ruthenates
• Small polarons mediated near-room-temperature metal-insulator transition in vanadium dioxide and their hopping dynamics
• Mesoscopic quantum effects in a bad metal, hydrogen-doped vanadium dioxide
• Competitive coexistence of ferromagnetism and metal--insulator transition of VO${}_2$ nanoparticles
• Temperature Gated Thermal Rectifier
• Toward nonthermal control of excited quantum materials: framework and investigations by ultrafast electron scattering and imaging