T$_{c}$ anisotropy and phase separation in strained Vanadium Dioxide films

ORAL

Abstract

We report Infrared near field study on strain induced transition temperature (T$_{c})$ anisotropy in vanadium dioxide (VO$_{2})$ films via direct visualization of a spontaneous structural and electronic phase separation. The films are epitaxially grown on [110]$_{R}$ or [100]$_{R}$ TiO$_{2}$ substrates and exhibit large uniaxial strain. By mapping the film topography with AFM and electronic percolation with Infrared scattering scanning near-field optical microscopy, a temperature dependent electron-lattice correlation can be clearly observed. Our work sheds a new light onto the nature of the Tc anomaly in metal-insulator transition and leads to the possibility of controlling the material's properties through strain induced phase separation.

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Authors

  • Mengkun Liu

    • Department of Physics, The University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA

  • Martin Wagner

    • Department of Physics, The University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA

  • Elsa Abreu

    • Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA

  • Salinporn Kittiwatanakul

    • Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904, USA

  • Alexander Mcleod

    • Department of Physics, The University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA

  • Michael Goldflam

    • Department of Physics, The University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA

  • Zhe Fei

    • Department of Physics, The University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA

  • Siyuan Dai

    • Department of Physics, The University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA

  • Michael Fogler

    • Department of Physics, The University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA

  • Jiwei Lu

    • Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904, USA

  • Stuart Wolf

    • Department of Materials Science and Engineering \& Department of Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904, USA

  • Richard Averitt

    • Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA

  • D.N. Basov

    • Department of Physics, The University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA