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Metallic Diluted Dimerization in VO 2 Tweeds
Author(s) -
Sandiumenge Felip,
Rodríguez Laura,
Pruneda Miguel,
Magén César,
Santiso José,
Catalan Gustau
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
advanced materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 10.707
H-Index - 527
eISSN - 1521-4095
pISSN - 0935-9648
DOI - 10.1002/adma.202004374
Subject(s) - monoclinic crystal system , materials science , vanadium , atomic units , chemical physics , phase transition , rutile , density functional theory , spectroscopy , phase (matter) , condensed matter physics , nanotechnology , crystallography , crystal structure , computational chemistry , chemistry , physics , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics , metallurgy
The observation of electronic phase separation textures in vanadium dioxide, a prototypical electron‐correlated oxide, has recently added new perspectives on the long standing debate about its metal–insulator transition and its applications. Yet, the lack of atomically resolved information on phases accompanying such complex patterns still hinders a comprehensive understanding of the transition and its implementation in practical devices. In this work, atomic resolution imaging and spectroscopy unveils the existence of ferroelastic tweed structures on ≈ 5 nm length scales, well below the resolution limit of currently used spectroscopic imaging techniques. Moreover, density functional theory calculations show that this pretransitional fine‐scale tweed, which on average looks and behaves like the standard metallic rutile phase, is in fact weaved by semi‐dimerized chains of vanadium in a new monoclinic phase that represents a structural bridge to the monoclinic insulating ground state. These observations provide a multiscale perspective for the interpretation of existing data, whereby phase coexistence and structural intermixing can occur all the way down to the atomic scale.