The electrical conductivity of the switching channel of vanadium dioxide thin-film sandwich structures is studied over a wide temperature range (15-300 K). It is shown that the electrical resistance of the channel varies with temperature as R~exp(aT-b/T) in the high-temperature region (above 70 K). The experimental results are discussed from the viewpoint of the small polaron hopping conduction theory which takes into account the influence of thermal lattice vibrations onto the resonance integral.
Temperature dependent magneto-transport measurements in magnetic fields of up to 12 Tesla were performed on thin film vanadium dioxide (VO2) across the metal-insulator transition (MIT). The Hall carrier density increases by 4 orders of magnitude at the MIT and accounts almost entirely for the resistance change. The Hall mobility varies little across the MIT and remains low, ~0.1cm2/V sec. Electrons are found to be the major carriers on both sides of the MIT. Small positive magnetoresistance in the semiconducting phase is measured.
The complexity of strongly correlated electron physics in vanadium dioxide is exemplified as its rich phase diagrams of all kinds, which in turn shed light on the mechanisms behind its various phase transitions. In this work, we map out the hydrostatic pressure - temperature phase diagram of vanadium dioxide nanobeams by independently varying pressure and temperature with a diamond anvil cell. In addition to the well-known insulating M1 (monoclinic) and metallic R (tetragonal) phases, the diagram identifies the existence at high pressures of the insulating M1' (monoclinic, more conductive than…
Methane (CH_4) gas sensing properties of novel vanadium dioxide (VO_2) nanostructured films is reported for the first time. The single phase nanostructures are synthesized by pulsed dc-magnetron sputtering of V target followed by oxidation in O_2 atmosphere at 550 ^oC. The partial pressure of O_2 is controlled to obtain stoichiometric VO_2 with the samples showing rutile monoclinic crystalline symmetry and regions of rod shaped nano-architectures. These nanostructured films exhibit a reversible semiconductor to metal transition in the temperature range of 60-70 ^oC. Gas sensing experiments are…
We present a density-functional theory (DFT) study of the structural, electronic, and chemical bonding behaviour in germanium (Ge)-doped vanadium dioxide (VO$_2$). Our motivation is to explain the reported increase of the metal-insulator transition temperature under Ge doping and to understand how much of the fundamental physics and chemistry behind it can be captured at the conventional DFT level. We model doping using a supercell approach, with various concentrations and different spatial distributions of Ge atoms in VO$_2$. Our results suggest that the addition of Ge atoms strongly perturbs…
The debate about whether the insulating phases of vanadium dioxide (VO2) can be described by band theory or must be described by a theory of strong electron correlations remains unresolved even after decades of research. Energy-band calculations using hybrid exchange functionals or including self-energy corrections account for the insulating or metallic nature of different phases, but have not yet successfully accounted for the observed magnetic orderings. Strongly-correlated theories have had limited quantitative success. Here we report that, by using hard pseudopotentials and an optimized hy…
Materials that undergo reversible metal-insulator transitions are obvious candidates for new generations of devices. For such potential to be realised, the underlying microscopic mechanisms of such transitions must be fully determined. In this work we probe the correlation between the energy landscape and electronic structure of the metal-insulator transition of vanadium dioxide and the atomic motions occurring using first principles calculations and high resolution X-ray diffraction. Calculations find an energy barrier between the high and low temperature phases corresponding to contraction f…
The thermal radiative near field transport between vanadium dioxide and silicon oxide at submicron distances is expected to exhibit a strong dependence on the state of vanadium dioxide which undergoes a metal-insulator transition near room temperature. We report the measurement of near field thermal transport between a heated silicon oxide micro-sphere and a vanadium dioxide thin film on a titanium oxide (rutile) substrate. The temperatures of the 15 nm vanadium dioxide thin film varied to be below and above the metal-insulator-transition, the sphere temperatures were varied in a range between…
In this work, we present the investigation of temperature dependent hall measurement of the ultra thin VO$_2$ films grown on Si/SiO$_2$ substrate. Experimental results suggest that electrons are the predominant carrier both in the semiconducting and metallic phases. The decrease of the resistivity with increasing temperature is mainly caused by the increase in the number density of charge carriers. The temperature dependence of the carrier concentration indicates the VO$_2$ films has a band gap of 0.40$\pm$0.09 $ev$ in the semiconducting phase. Analysis of hall effect data based on a composite…
Thermoelectric measurements detect the asymmetry between the density of states above and below the chemical potential in a material. It provides insights into small variations in the density of states near the chemical potential, complementing electron transport measurements. Here, combined resistance and thermoelectric power measurements are performed on vanadium dioxide (VO2), a prototypical correlated electron material, under ionic-liquid (IL) gating. With IL gating, charge transport below the metal-to-insulator-transition (MIT) temperature remains in the thermally activated regime, while t…
The effects of the spin and lattice degrees of freedom on the electronic structure of M1 vanadium dioxide are explored using a quasiparticle description. Contraction of the inter-vanadium spacing of the Peierls pairings stabilizes bonding electrons, reducing polarizability and thus widening the band gap. Increases of this inter-vanadium spacing of as little as 1 \% reduce this stabilization, resulting in a crossover to ferromagnetic behaviour accomplished by half of the valence electrons inhabiting the leading edge of the conduction band in localized atomic-like orbitals, as the antiferromagne…
The low temperature monoclinic, insulating phase of vanadium dioxide is ordinarily considered nonmagnetic, with dimerized vanadium atoms forming spin singlets, though paramagnetic response is seen at low temperatures. We find a nonlocal spin Seebeck signal in VO2 films that appears below 30 K and which increases with decreasing temperature. The spin Seebeck response has a non-hysteretic dependence on in-plane external magnetic field. This paramagnetic spin Seebeck response is discussed in terms of prior findings on paramagnetic spin Seebeck effects and expected magnetic excitations of the mono…
Vanadium dioxide undergoes a first order metal-insulator transition at 340 K. In this work, we develop and carry out state of the art linear scaling DFT calculations refined with non-local dynamical mean-field theory. We identify a complex mechanism, a Peierls-assisted orbital selection Mott instability, which is responsible for the insulating M$_1$ phase, and furthermore survives a moderate degree of disorder.
The metal-insulator transition and unconventional metallic transport in vanadium dioxide (VO$_2$) are investigated with a combination of spectroscopic ellipsometry and reflectance measurements. The data indicates that electronic correlations, not electron-phonon interactions, govern charge dynamics in the metallic state of VO$_2$. This study focuses on the frequency and temperature dependence of the conductivity in the regime of extremely short mean free path violating the Ioffe-Regel-Mott limit of metallic transport. The standard quasiparticle picture of charge conduction is found to be unten…
Vanadium dioxide (VO$_2$) undergoes a metal-insulator transition (MIT) at 340 K with the structural change between tetragonal and monoclinic crystals as the temperature is lowered. The conductivity $σ$ drops at MIT by four orders of magnitude. The low-temperature monoclinic phase is known to have a lower ground-state energy. The existence of a $k$-vector ${\boldsymbol k}$ is prerequisite for the conduction since the ${\boldsymbol k}$ appears in the semiclassical equation of motion for the conduction electron (wave packet). Each wave packet is, by assumption, composed of the plane waves proceed…
Vanadium dioxide is currently considered as one of the most promising metarials for oxide elcteronics. Both planar and sandwich thin-film MOM devices based on VO2 exhibit electrical switching with an S-shaped I-V characteristic, and this switching effect is associated with the metal-insulator transition (MIT). In an electrical circuit containing such a switching device, relaxation oscillations are observed if the load line intersects the I-V curve at a unique point in NDR region. All these effects are potentially prospective for designing various devices of oxide electronics, particularly, ele…
The reversible metal-insulator transition in VO$_2$ at $T_\text{C} \approx 340$ K has been closely scrutinized yet its thermodynamic origin remains ambiguous. We discuss the origin of the transition entropy by calculating the electron and phonon contributions at $T_\text{C}$ using density functional theory. The vibration frequencies are obtained from harmonic phonon calculations, with the soft modes that are imaginary at zero temperature renormalized to real values at $T_\text{C}$ using experimental information from diffuse x-ray scattering at high-symmetry wavevectors. Gaussian Process Regres…
VO2 is a much-discussed material for oxide electronics and neuromorphic computing applications. Here, heteroepitaxy of vanadium dioxide (VO2) was realized on top of oxide nanosheets that cover either the amorphous silicon dioxide surfaces of Si substrates or X-ray transparent silicon nitride membranes. The out-of-plane orientation of the VO2 thin films was controlled at will between (011)M1/(110)R and (-402)M1/(002)R by coating the bulk substrates with Ti0.87O2 and NbWO6 nanosheets, respectively, prior to VO2 growth. Temperature dependent X-ray diffraction and automated crystal orientation map…
The influence of Coulomb correlation on magnetic and spectral properties in metallic rutile phase of vanadium dioxide is studied by state of the art LDA+DMFT method. Calculation results in strongly correlated metallic state with an effective mass renormalization $m^*/m\approx2$. Uniform magnetic susceptibility shows Curie-Weiss temperature dependence with effective magnetic moment, $p_{eff}^{theor} = 1.54 μ_B$, in a good agreement with the experimental value $p_{eff}^{exp} = 1.53 μ_B$ that is close to ideal value for V$^{4+}$ ion with the spin $S=1/2$, $p_{eff} = 1.73 μ_B$. Calculated spectral…
Electrically driven metal-insulator transition in vanadium dioxide (VO2) is of interest in emerging memory devices, neural computation, and high speed electronics. We report on the fabrication of out-of-plane VO2 metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structures and reproducible high-speed switching measurements in these two-terminal devices. We have observed a clear correlation between electrically-driven ON/OFF current ratio and thermally-induced resistance change during metal-insulator transition. It is also found that sharp metal-insulator transition could be triggered by external voltage pulses with…
We use optical-pump terahertz-probe spectroscopy to investigate the near-threshold behavior of the photoinduced insulator-to-metal (IM) transition in vanadium dioxide thin films. Upon approaching Tc a reduction in the fluence required to drive the IM transition is observed, consistent with a softening of the insulating state due to an increasing metallic volume fraction (below the percolation limit). This phase coexistence facilitates the growth of a homogeneous metallic conducting phase following superheating via photoexcitation. A simple dynamic model using Bruggeman effective medium theory …
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 …
Vanadium dioxide is a complex oxide material, which shows large resistivity and optical reflectance change while transitioning from the insulator to metal phase at ~68 °C. In this work, we use a modified atmospheric thermal oxidation method to oxidize RF-sputtered Vanadium films. Structural, surface-morphology and phase-transition properties of the oxidized films as a function of oxidation duration are presented. Phase-pure VO2 films are obtained by oxidizing ~130 nm Vanadium films in short oxidation duration of ~30 seconds. Compared to previous reports on VO2 synthesis using atmospheric oxida…
We investigate the electronic and structural changes at the nanoscale in vanadium dioxide (VO2) in the vicinity of its thermally driven phase transition. Both electronic and structural changes exhibit phase coexistence leading to percolation. In addition, we observe a dichotomy between the local electronic and structural transitions. Nanoscale x-ray diffraction reveals local, non-monotonic switching of the lattice structure, a phenomenon that is not seen in the electronic insulator-to-metal transition mapped by near-field infrared microscopy.
The complex interplay between several active degrees of freedom (charge, lattice, orbtial and spin order) is thought to determine the electronic properties of many oxides, but the respective role of the various contributions is often extremely difficult to determine. Vanadium dioxide (VO$_2$) is a particularly notorious example. Here we report on combined ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) and infrared transmissivity experiments in which we directly watch and separate the lattice and charge density reorganizations that are associated with the optically-induced semiconductor-metal transition …
Recent progress in growth and characterization of thin-film VO$_2$ has shown its electronic properties can be significantly modulated by epitaxial matching. To throw new light on the concept of `Mott engineering', we develop a symmetry-consistent approach to treat structural distortions and electronic correlations in epitaxial VO$_2$ films under strain, and compare our design with direct experimental probes. We find strong evidence for the emergence of correlation-driven charge order deep in the metallic phase, and our results indicate that exotic phases of VO$_2$ can be controlled with epitax…
In this work, the results of fabricating ultra thin VO$_2$ films on the technologically relevant amorphous SiO$_2$ surface using reactive DC magnetron sputtering are presented. Results indicate that a post deposition anneal in low partial pressures of oxygen is an effective way at stabilizing the VO$_2$(M$_{1}$) phase on the SiO$_2$ surface. VO$_2$ films with a thickness of 42nm show a continuous microstructure, and undergo a resistivity change of more than a factor of 200 as the temperature of the film increases above 72$^{o}C$. The film shows hysteresis in the metal-insulator transition temp…
Targeted synthesis of polycrystalline vanadium dioxide thin films via post-deposition annealing
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (National Research University)（莫斯科物理技术学院（国立研究型大学)）；Center for Neurophysics and Neuromorphic Technologies（神经物理与类脑技术中心）；Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University（伊曼努尔·康德波罗的海联邦大学）
This paper discusses questions of synthesizing and pressing vanadium oxides to create film-forming materials that can be used in producing optical coatings. Based on the film-forming materials thus created, technological processes have been developed for fabricating coatings from vanadium dioxide by two methods of producing thin films: vacuum evaporation and magnetron sputtering. Questions of using films made from vanadium oxide in optical instrumentation are considered.
Vanadium dioxide(VO$_2$) is a paradigmatic example of a strongly correlated system that undergoes a metal-insulator transition at a structural phase transition. To date, this transition has necessitated significant post-hoc adjustments to theory in order to be described properly. Here we report standard state-of-the-art first principles quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations of the structural dependence of the properties of VO$_2$. Using this technique, we simulate the interactions between electrons explicitly, which allows for the metal-insulator transition to naturally emerge, importantly wi…
Nonlinear spectroscopy in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft x-ray spectral range offers the opportunity for element selective probing of ultrafast dynamics using core-valence transitions (Mukamel et al., Acc. Chem. Res. 42, 553 (2009)). We demonstrate a step on this path showing core-valence sensitivity in transient grating spectroscopy with EUV probing. We study the optically induced insulator-to-metal transition (IMT) of a VO2 film with EUV diffraction from the optically excited sample. The VO2 exhibits a change in the 3p-3d resonance of V accompanied by an acoustic response. Due to the…
The physics of the metal-insulator transition (MIT) in vanadium dioxide remains a subject of intense interest. Because of the complicating effects of elastic strain on the phase transition, there is interest in comparatively strain-free means of examining VO2 material properties. We report contact-free, low-strain studies of the MIT through an inductive bridge approach sensitive to the magnetic response of VO2 powder. Rather than observing the expected step-like change in susceptibility at the transition, we argue that the measured response is dominated by an analog of the Barkhausen effect, d…
We present structural studies of V$_{1-x}$Cr$_x$O$_2$ (pure, 0.7% and 2.5% Cr doped) compounds at room temperature in a diamond anvil cell for pressures up to 20 GPa using synchrotron x-ray powder diffraction. All the samples studied show a persistence of the monoclinic $M_1$ symmetry between 4 and 12 GPa. Above 12 GPa, the monoclinic $M_1$ symmetry changes to isostructural $M_x$ phase (space group $P2_1/c$) with a significant anisotropy in lattice compression of the $b$-$c$ plane of the $M_{1}$ phase. This behavior can be reconciled invoking the pressure induced charge-delocalization.
We report modulation of a reversible phase transition in VO2 films by hydrogen doping. A metallic phase and a new insulating phase are successively observed at room temperature as the doping concentration increases. It is suggested that the polarized charges from doped hydrogens play an important role. These charges gradually occupy V3d-O2p hybridized orbitals and consequently modulate the filling of the VO2 crystal conduction band-edge states, which eventually evolve into new valence band-edge states. This demonstrates the exceptional sensitivity of VO2 electronic properties to electron conce…
Surface plasmon polaritons can substantially reduce the sizes of optical devices, since they can concentrate light to (sub)wavelength scales. However, (sub)wavelength-scale electro-optic plasmonic switches or modulators with high efficiency, low insertion loss, and high extinction ratios remain a challenge due to their small active volumes. Here, we use the insulator-metal phase transition of a correlated-electron material, vanadium dioxide, to overcome this limitation and demonstrate compact, broadband, and efficient plasmonic switches with integrated electrical control. The devices are micro…
Vanadium dioxide (VO2) undergoes a phase transition at a temperature of 340 K between an insulating monoclinic M1 phase and a conducting rutile phase. Accurate measurements of possible anisotropy of the electronic properties and phonon features of VO2 in the insulating monoclinic M1 and metallic rutile phases are a prerequisite for understanding the phase transition in this correlated system. Recently, it has become possible to grow single domain untwinned VO2 microcrystals which makes it possible to investigate the true anisotropy of VO2. We performed polarized transmission infrared micro-spe…
We combine ultrafast electron diffraction and time-resolved terahertz spectroscopy measurements to unravel the connection between structure and electronic transport properties during the photoinduced insulator-metal transitions in vanadium dioxide. We determine the structure of the metastable monoclinic metal phase, which exhibits anti-ferroelectric charge order arising from a thermally activated, orbital-selective phase transition in the electron system. The relative contribution of this photoinduced monoclinic metal (which has no equilibrium analog) and the photoinduced rutile metal (known f…
Insulator-to-metal (MI) phase transition in vanadium dioxide (VO2) thin films with controlled lattice distortion was investigated by thermopower measurements. VO2 epitaxial films with different crystallographic orientations, grown on (0001) alpha-Al2O3, (11-20) alpha-Al2O3, and (001) TiO2 substrates, showed significant decrease of absolute value of Seebeck coefficient (S) from ~200 to 23 microV K-1, along with a sharp drop in electrical resistivity (rho), due to the transition from an insulator to a metal. The MI transition temperatures observed both in rho (Trho) and S (TS) for the VO2 films …
The metal-insulator transition (MIT) in vanadium dioxide (VO2) has the potential to lead to a number of disruptive technologies, including ultra-fast data storage, optical switches, and transistors which move beyond the limitations of silicon. For applications, VO2 films are deposited on crystalline substrates to prevent cracking observed in bulk VO2 crystals across the thermally driven MIT. Near the MIT, VO2 films exhibit nanoscale coexistence between metallic and insulating phases, which opens up further potential applications such as memristors, tunable capacitors, and optically engineered …
We present a detailed infrared study of the insulator-to-metal transition (IMT) in vanadium dioxide (VO2) thin films. Conventional infrared spectroscopy was employed to investigate the IMT in the far-field. Scanning near-field infrared microscopy directly revealed the percolative IMT with increasing temperature. We confirmed that the phase transition is also percolative with cooling across the IMT. We present extensive near-field infrared images of phase coexistence in the IMT regime in VO2. We find that the coexisting insulating and metallic regions at a fixed temperature are static on the ti…
Topotactic phase transformation in correlated vanadium dioxide through oxygen vacancy ordering
Key Laboratory of Magnetic Molecules and Magnetic Information Materials of Ministry of Education & School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Shanxi Normal University（山西师范大学化学与材料科学学院、教育部磁性分子与磁性信息材料重点实验室）；Research Institute of Materials Science, Shanxi Key Laboratory of Advanced Magnetic Materials and Devices, Shanxi Normal University（山西师范大学材料科学研究所、山西省先进磁性材料与器件重点实验室）
Oxygen vacancies (VO), a common type of point defects in metal oxides materials, play important roles on the physical and chemical properties. To obtain stoichiometric oxide crystal, the pre-existing VO is always removed via careful post-annealing treatment at high temperature in air or oxygen atmosphere. However, the annealing conditions is difficult to control and the removal of VO in bulk phase is restrained due to high energy barrier of VO migration. Here, we selected VO2 crystal film as the model system and developed an alternative annealing treatment aided by controllable hydrogen doping…
Hafnium dioxide (HfO2) is a promising ferroelectric (FE) material for achieving high-density nonvolatile memory and neuromorphic computing, due to its compatibility with the mainstream integrated circuit technology and the surprisingly enhanced ferroelectricity by reduced thickness. The FE switching dynamics is essential to the device performance, but the complexity of HfO2 atomic structure causes unknown of various FE switching paths and domain wall configurations. Here, we demonstrate that its low-barrier paths and domain walls can be comprehensively found and understood from a perspective o…
Electrical switching and rectifying properties of the metal-VO2-Si structures, on both p-type and n-type silicon, with vanadium dioxide films obtained by an acetylacetonate sol-gel method, are studied. The switching effect is shown to be due to the semiconductor-to-metal phase transition (SMPT) in vanadium dioxide. The shift of the switching threshold voltage, accompanied by the memory effect, in forward bias of the p-Si-VO2 anisotype heterojunction is observed. To explain this effect, a model is proposed which suggests the existence of an additional series resistance associated with a channel…
