Plasmonic mediated nucleation of resonant nano-cavities in metallic layers

We predict plasmonic mediated nucleation of pancake shaped resonant nano-cavities in metallic layers that are penetrable to laser fields. The underlying physics is that the cavity provides a narrow plasmonic resonance that maximizes its polarizability in an external field. The resonance yields a significant energy gain making the formation of such cavities highly favorable. Possible implications include nano-optics and generation of the dielectric bits in conductive films that underlie the existing optical recording phase change technology.

Electric field driven insulator-to-metal phase transitions

We show that strong enough electric fields can trigger nucleation of needle-shaped metallic embryos in insulators, even when the metal phase is energetically unfavorable without the field. This general phenomenon is due to the gigantic induced dipole moments acquired by the embryos which cause sufficient electrostatic energy gain. Nucleation kinetics are exponentially accelerated by the field-induced suppression of nucleation barriers. Our theory opens the venue of field driven material synthesis. In particular, we briefly discuss synthesis of metallic hydrogen at standard pressure.

Electric field induced nucleation: An alternative pathway to metallic hydrogen

Electric field induced nucleation is introduced as a possible mechanism to realize a metallic phase of hydrogen. Analytical expressions are derived for the nucleation probabilities of both thermal and quantum nucleation in terms of material parameters, temperature, and the applied field. Our results show that the insulator-metal transition can be driven by an electric field within a reasonable temperature range and at much lower pressures than the current paradigm of P > 400 GPa. Both static and oscillating fields are considered and practical implementations are discussed.

Thermodynamics of second phase conductive filaments

We present a theory of second phase conductive filaments in phase transformable systems; applications include threshold switches, phase change memory, and shunting in thin film structures. We show that the average filament parameters can be described thermodynamically. In agreement with the published data, the predicted filament current voltage characteristics exhibit negative differential resistance vanishing at high currents where the current density becomes a bulk material property. Our description is extendible to filament transients and allows for efficient numerical simulation.