A microscopic view on the metal-insulator transition in a Mott system

We unveil for the first time the metal-insulator transition (MIT) in Cr-doped V2O3 with submicron lateral resolution: with decreasing temperature, microscopic domains become metallic and coexist with an insulating background.



S. Lupi et al., Nature Comm. 1, 105 (2010)

Chromium doped vanadium sesquioxide, (V1‑xCrx)2O3, is the prototype system to study the properties of  fundamental phenomenon of electronic correlation, called Mott transition: temperature, doping or pressure induce a metal-to-insulator transition (MIT) between a paramagnetic metal (PM) and a paramagnetic insulator (PI). In the phase diagram of (V1‑xCrx)2O3, a Cr concentration of x=0.011 makes it possible to cross the transition between the PI and PM phases only by changing the temperature between 320 and 200 K.This transition was repeatedly explored with submicron spatial resolution on the Spectromicroscopy photoemission microscope: by measuring the photoemission yield at the Fermi energy, and detecting its lateral variation while scanning the specimen, it was possible to obtain metallicity maps while crossing the phase transition.

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A microscopic view on the Mott transition in chromium-doped V2O3.
S. Lupi, L. Baldassarre, B. Mansart, A. Perucchi, A. Barinov, P. Dudin, E. Papalazarou, F. Rodolakis, J.-P. Rueff, J.-P. Itié, S. Ravy, D. Nicoletti, P. Postorino, P. Hansmann, N. Parragh, A. Toschi, T. Saha-Dasgupta, O.K. Andersen, G. Sangiovanni, K. Held, M. Marsi;
Nature Communications 1, 105 (2010)
doi: 10.1038./ncomms1109
 
Last Updated on Tuesday, 24 November 2015 16:54