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Phys. Rev. B 83, 165108 (2011) [7 pages]

Nanoscale imaging of the electronic and structural transitions in vanadium dioxide

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M. M. Qazilbash1,*, A. Tripathi1, A. A. Schafgans1, Bong-Jun Kim2, Hyun-Tak Kim2,3, Zhonghou Cai4, M. V. Holt5, J. M. Maser5, F. Keilmann6, O. G. Shpyrko1, and D. N. Basov1
1Department of Physics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA
2Metal-Insulator Transition Center, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), Daejeon 305-350, Korea
3School of Advanced Device Technology, University of Science and Technology, Daejeon 305-333, Korea
4Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA
5Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA
6Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Munich Centre for Advanced Photonics and Center for NanoScience, D-85748 Garching, Germany

Received 10 January 2011; published 13 April 2011

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, nonmonotonic switching of the lattice structure, a phenomenon that is not seen in the electronic insulator-to-metal transition mapped by near-field infrared microscopy.

©2011 American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.83.165108
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevB.83.165108
PACS:
71.30.+h

*Permanent address: Department of Physics, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia 23187, USA; mumtaz@wm.edu

 
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