Abstract
Electron–electron interactions can render an otherwise conducting material insulating1, with the insulator–metal phase transition in correlated-electron materials being the canonical macroscopic manifestation of the competition between charge-carrier itinerancy and localization. The transition can arise from underlying microscopic interactions among the charge, lattice, orbital and spin degrees of freedom, the complexity of which leads to multiple phase-transition pathways. For example, in many transition metal oxides, the insulator–metal transition has been achieved with external stimuli, including temperature, light, electric field, mechanical strain or magnetic field2,3,4,5,6,7. Vanadium dioxide is particularly intriguing because both the lattice and on-site Coulomb repulsion contribute to the insulator-to-metal transition at 340 K (ref. 8). Thus, although the precise microscopic origin of the phase transition remains elusive, vanadium dioxide serves as a testbed for correlated-electron phase-transition dynamics. Here we report the observation of an insulator–metal transition in vanadium dioxide induced by a terahertz electric field. This is achieved using metamaterial-enhanced picosecond, high-field terahertz pulses to reduce the Coulomb-induced potential barrier for carrier transport9. A nonlinear metamaterial response is observed through the phase transition, demonstrating that high-field terahertz pulses provide alternative pathways to induce collective electronic and structural rearrangements. The metamaterial resonators play a dual role, providing sub-wavelength field enhancement that locally drives the nonlinear response, and global sensitivity to the local changes, thereby enabling macroscopic observation of the dynamics10,11. This methodology provides a powerful platform to investigate low-energy dynamics in condensed matter and, further, demonstrates that integration of metamaterials with complex matter is a viable pathway to realize functional nonlinear electromagnetic composites.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Morin, F. J. Oxides which show a metal-to-insulator transition at the Neel temperature. Phys. Rev. Lett. 3, 34–36 (1959)
Limelette, P. et al. Universality and critical behavior at the Mott transition. Science 302, 89–92 (2003)
Asamitsu, A., Tomioka, Y., Kuwahara, H. & Tokura, Y. Current switching of resistive states in magnetoresistive manganites. Nature 388, 50–52 (1997)
Wang, J. et al. Epitaxial BiFeO3 multiferroic thin film heterostructures. Science 299, 1719–1722 (2003)
Cao, J. et al. Strain engineering and one-dimensional organization of metal-insulator domains in single-crystal vanadium dioxide beams. Nature Nanotechnol. 4, 732–737 (2009)
Liu, M. K. et al. Photoinduced phase transitions by time resolved far-infrared spectroscopy in V2O3 . Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 066403 (2011)
Cavalleri, A. et al. Femtosecond structural dynamics in VO2 during an ultrafast solid-solid phase transition. Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 237401 (2001)
Berglund, C. N. & Guggenheim, H. J. Electronic properties of VO2 near the semiconductor-metal transition. Phys. Rev. 185, 1022–1033 (1969)
Stefanovich, G., Pergament, A. & Stefanovich, D. Electrical switching and Mott transition in VO2. J. Phys. Condens. Matter 12, 8837–8845 (2000)
Merbold, H., Bitzer, A. & Feurer, T. Second harmonic generation based on strong field enhancement in nanostructured THz materials. Opt. Express 19, 7262–7273 (2011)
Chen, H.-T. et al. Active terahertz metamaterial devices. Nature 444, 597–600 (2006)
Kübler, C. et al. Coherent structural dynamics and electronics correlations during an ultrafast insulator-to-metal phase transition in VO2 . Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 116401 (2007)
Hilton, D. J. et al. Enhanced photosusceptibility near Tc for the light-induced insulator-to-metal phase transition in vanadium dioxide. Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 226401 (2007)
Kim, H.-T. et al. Mechanism and observation of Mott transition in VO2-based two- and three- terminal devices. N. J. Phys. 6, 52 (2004)
Hoffmann, M. C., Hebling, J., Hwang, H. Y., Yeh, K.-L. & Nelson, K. A. THz-pump/THz-probe spectroscopy of semiconductors at high field strengths. J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 26, A29–A34 (2009)
Yeh, K.-L., Hoffmann, M. C., Hebling, J. & Nelson, K. A. Generation of 10 µJ ultrashort THz pulses by optical rectification. Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 171121 (2007)
Hirori, H., Doi, A., Blanchard, F. & Tanaka, K. Single-cycle terahertz pulses with amplitudes exceeding 1 MV/cm generated by optical rectification in LiNbO3 . Appl. Phys. Lett. 98, 091106 (2011)
Hoffmann, M. C., Hebling, J., Hwang, H. Y., Yeh K.-L & Nelson K. A Impact ionization in InSb proved by terahertz pump-terahertz probe spectroscopy. Phys. Rev. B 79, 161201 (2009)
West, K. G. et al. Growth and characterization of vanadium dioxide thin films prepared by reactive-based target ion beam deposition. J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 26, 133–139 (2008)
Werley, C. A. et al. Time-resolved imaging of near fields in THz antennas and direct quantitative measurement of field enhancements. Opt. Express 20, 8551–8567 (2012)
Driscoll, T. et al. Memory metamaterials. Science 325, 1518–1521 (2009)
Seo, M. A. et al. Terahertz field enhancement by a metallic nano slit operating beyond the skin-depth limit. Nature Photon. 3,152–156 (2009)
Shalaby, M. et al. Concurrent field enhancement and high transmission of THz radiation in nanoslit arrays. Appl. Phys. Lett. 99, 041110 (2011)
Simmons, J. G. Poole-Frenkel effect and Schottky effect in metal-insulator-metal systems. Phys. Rev. 155, 657–660 (1967)
Yeargan, J. R. & Taylor, H. L. The Poole-Frenkel effect with compensation present. J. Appl. Phys. 39, 5600–5604 (1968)
Pergament, A., Boriskov, P. P., Velichko, A. A. & Kuldin, N. A. Switching effect and the metal-insulator transition in electric field. J. Phys. Chem. Solids 71, 874–879 (2010)
Groeneveld, R. H. M., Sprik, R. & Lagendijk, A. Femtosecond spectroscopy of electron-electron and electron-phonon energy relaxation in Ag and Au. Phys. Rev. B 51, 11433–11445 (1995)
Pashkin, A. et al. Ultrafast insulator-metal phase transition in VO2 studied by multiterahertz spectroscopy. Phys. Rev. B 83, 195120 (2011)
Basov, D. N. et al. Electrodynamics of correlated electron materials. Rev. Mod. Phys. 83, 471–541 (2011)
Qazilbash, M. M. et al. Mott transition in VO2 revealed by infrared spectroscopy and nano-imaging. Science 318, 1750–1753 (2007)
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge support from DOE-BES under grant DE-FG02-09ER46643 and from ONR grant N00014-09-1-1103.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
R.D.A., K.A.N, M.L. and H.Y.H. came up with the experimental idea. H.Y.H. and M.L. performed the experiments. H.T., K.F., M.L., F.G.O. and X.Z. fabricated the metamaterial structures. A.J.S., M.L. and H.Y.H. performed full-wave electromagnetic simulation and analysed the data. K.G.W., S.K., J.L. and S.A.W. prepared the VO2 thin films. A.C.S. and G.R.K. assisted with the simulation. M.L., H.Y.H., R.D.A. and K.A.N. wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to the understanding of the underlying physics.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
This file contains Supplementary Materials and Methods, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Figures 1-2 and additional references. (PDF 424 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Liu, M., Hwang, H., Tao, H. et al. Terahertz-field-induced insulator-to-metal transition in vanadium dioxide metamaterial. Nature 487, 345–348 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11231
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11231
This article is cited by
-
Destabilization of spin-Peierls phase via a charge-spin modulated Floquet state induced by intramolecular vibrational excitation
Communications Physics (2024)
-
Terahertz radiation by quantum interference of excitons in a one-dimensional Mott insulator
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Millimeter-wave to near-terahertz sensors based on reversible insulator-to-metal transition in VO2
Communications Materials (2023)
-
Intrinsic 1\({T}^{{\prime} }\) phase induced in atomically thin 2H-MoTe2 by a single terahertz pulse
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Strong electron-phonon coupling driven pseudogap modulation and density-wave fluctuations in a correlated polar metal
Nature Communications (2023)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.
