Condensed Matter Physics Seminar

Electronically triggered sub-picosecond metal-insulator transitions in oxide thin films could enable novel information processing technologies and are of great interest from perspective of understanding strong electronic correlations. We will describe on-going efforts in our laboratory on the problem of gated phase transitions in oxide semiconductors, particularly vanadium oxide thin films. Although a material of interest for several decades since Morin’s report in 1959, a number of questions need to be addressed critically, that relate to un-ambiguous demonstration of electronic triggering of the phase transition, structural stability and lattice distortions, as well as fundamental transport properties in nanoscale devices. Overall, this makes an exciting research problem in condensed matter materials physics, at the same time, potentially relevant towards emerging technologies.