A Gentle and G B Smith 2008 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 41 015402 doi:10.1088/0022-3727/41/1/015402
A Gentle and G B Smith
Show affiliationsThin films of VO2 doped with aluminium, or with nanoscale grain sizes, have been produced. They display semiconductor resistive behaviour above the transition temperature Tc, but a metallic and plasmonic optical response. All samples optically switch over almost identical large ranges at the transition, but have quite variable resistive switching. At fixed grain size a rigorous new quantitative correlation is found between semiconductor resistivity below Tc and the activation energy above Tc as Al doping level varies. Large crystals doped with Al also display this dual behaviour. A possible mechanism is discussed involving fast local fluctuations on neighbouring V4+ ions involving transient dimers with no net spin. Such fluctuations would then need to interact and correlate their motion over the scale of a nanograin within the lifetime of the dimer excitation.
71.30.+h Metal-insulator transitions and other electronic transitions
Condensed matter: electrical, magnetic and optical
Issue 1 (7 January 2008)
Received 5 October 2007
Published 17 December 2007
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