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Register a new userMagnetic-field-induced insulator-metal transition in W-doped VO2 at 500 T
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Metal-insulator (MI) transitions in correlated electron systems have long been a central and controversial issue in material science. Vanadium dioxide (VO2) exhibits a first-order MI transition at 340 K. For more than half a century, it has been debated whether electronic correlation or the structural instability due to dimerised V ions is the more essential driving force behind this MI transition. Here, we show that an ultrahigh magnetic field of 500 T renders the insulator phase of tungsten (W)-doped VO2 metallic. The spin Zeeman effect on the d electrons of the V ions dissociates the dimers in the insulating phase, resulting in the delocalisation of electrons. Because the Mott-Hubbard gap essentially does not depend on the spin degree of freedom, the structural instability is likely to be the more essential driving force behind the MI transition.
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VO2 is a strongly correlated material, which undergoes a reversible metal insulator transition (MIT) coupled to a structural phase transition upon heating (T= 67{deg} C). Since its discovery the nature of the insulating state has long been debated and different solid-state mechanisms have been proposed to explain its nature: Mott-Hubbard correlation, Peierls distortion or a combination of both. Moreover, still now there is a lack of consensus on the interplay between the different degrees of freedom: charge, lattice, orbital and how they contribute to the MIT. In this manuscript we will investigate across the MIT the orbital evolution induced by a tensile strain applied to thin VO2 films. The strained films allowed to study the interplay between orbital and lattice degrees of freedom and to clarify MIT properties.
First-order phase transitions in solids are notoriously challenging to study. The combination of change in unit cell shape, long range of elastic distortion, and flow of latent heat leads to large energy barriers resulting in domain structure, hysteresis, and cracking. The situation is still worse near a triple point where more than two phases are involved. The famous metal-insulator transition (MIT) in vanadium dioxide, a popular candidate for ultrafast optical and electrical switching applications, is a case in point. Even though VO2 is one of the simplest strongly correlated materials, experimental difficulties posed by the first-order nature of the MIT as well as the involvement of at least two competing insulating phases have led to persistent controversy about its nature. Here, we show that studying single-crystal VO2 nanobeams in a purpose-built nanomechanical strain apparatus allows investigation of this prototypical phase transition with unprecedented control and precision. Our results include the striking finding that the triple point of the metallic and two insulating phases is at the transition temperature, T_tr = T_c, which we determine to be 65.0 +- 0.1 C. The findings have profound implications for the mechanism of the MIT in VO2, but in addition they demonstrate the importance of such an approach for mastering phase transitions in many other strongly correlated materials, such as manganites and iron-based superconductors.
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