Manipulating the insulator-metal transition through tip-induced hydrogenation

作者：Li, Linglong; Wang, Meng; Zhou, Yadong; Zhang, Yang; Zhang, Fan; Wu, Yongshun; Wang, Yujia; Lyu, Yingjie; Lu, Nianpeng; Wang, Guopeng; Peng, Huining; Shen, Shengchun; Du, Yingge; Zhu, Zihua; Nan, Ce-Wen; Yu, Pu^*

来源：Nature Materials, 2022, 21(11): 1246-+.

DOI：10.1038/s41563-022-01373-4

• VANADIUM DIOXIDE
• VO2
• MICROSCOPY
• MODULATION

Manipulating the insulator-metal transition in strongly correlated materials has attracted a broad range of research activity due to its promising applications in, for example, memories, electrochromic windows and optical modulators(1,)(2). Electric-field-controlled hydrogenation using ionic liquids(3-6) and solid electrolytes(7-9) is a useful strategy to obtain the insulator-metal transition with corresponding electron filling, but faces technical challenges for miniaturization due to the complicated device architecture. Here we demonstrate reversible electric-field control of nanoscale hydrogenation into VO2 with a tunable insulator-metal transition using a scanning probe. The Pt-coated probe serves as an efficient catalyst to split hydrogen molecules, while the positive-biased voltage accelerates hydrogen ions between the tip and sample surface to facilitate their incorporation, leading to non-volatile transformation from insulating VO2 into conducting HxVO2. Remarkably, a negative-biased voltage triggers dehydrogenation to restore the insulating VO2. This work demonstrates a local and reversible electric-field-controlled insulator-metal transition through hydrogen evolution and presents a versatile pathway to exploit multiple functional devices at the nanoscale.

• 单位
  清华大学; 中国科学院