Heterogenous nucleation at twin boundaries in a VO<sub>2</sub> thin film revealed by nano-optical spectroscopy

POSTER

Abstract

Symmetry lowering phase transitions allow each unit cell of a derived phase to assume one of several variants of the crystallographic orientation. As a result self-organized twin-domains can form on mesoscopic length-scales. Polarized microscopy is an established approach to characterize the local crystallographic orientation of such domains. However, the inherent limitations of diffraction forbid the observation of nanotextured domain patterns with conventional microscopy. Here, I discuss an accurate approach to model the frequency dependent nano-optical contrast in low symmetry crystalline structures. Comparison between the model calculations and our experimental data show good agreement for two expected twin-domain orientations in a VO2 thin film. In our model, the nano-optical contrast between domains stems from the anisotropic character of phonon-polaritons. Thus our approach may enable fingerprint assignment of the local crystallographic orientation in nanotextured domains. Co-located nano-optical images at distinct infrared frequencies directly reveal real-space correlations between the twin-domain nanotexturing and locations where metallic domains emerge at the onset of the transition region.

*This research was supported by the National Korean MS&ICT project (2017-0-00830).

Presenters

  • Aaron Sternbach

    • Department of Physics, Columbia University
    • Columbia University
    • Columbia Univ

Authors

  • Aaron Sternbach

    • Department of Physics, Columbia University
    • Columbia University
    • Columbia Univ

  • Frank Ruta

    • Columbia University

  • Yin Shi

    • Pennslvania State University

  • Tetiana Slusar

    • Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute

  • Samuel Moore

    • Department of Physics, Columbia University
    • Columbia University

  • Alexander McLeod

    • Columbia University
    • Department of Physics, Columbia University
    • Columbia Univ
    • Physics, Columbia University

  • Jacob Schalch

    • University of California, San Diego

  • Guangwu Duan

    • Boston University

  • Xin Zhang

    • Boston University
    • Mechanical Engineering, Boston University

  • Mengkun Liu

    • Stony Brook University
    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, State Univ of NY - Stony Brook
    • Department of Physics, Stony Brook University
    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University

  • Hyun-Tak Kim

    • Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute
    • Metal-Insulator Transition Laboratory, ETRI
    • Metal-Insulator Transition Laboratory, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
    • MIT Lab, ETRI in Korea

  • Richard Averitt

    • University of California, San Diego
    • University of California San Diego
    • UC San Diego
    • Physics, University of California San Diego
    • Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego
    • University of California

  • Long-Qing Chen

    • Pennsylvania State University
    • Pennslvania State University
    • Material Science and Engineering, Penn State University

  • Dmitri Basov

    • Columbia University
    • Department of Physics, Columbia University
    • Physics, Columbia University
    • Columbia Univ