Oxide Electronics Utilizing Ultrafast Metal-Insulator Transitions

Although phase transitions have long been a centerpiece of condensed matter materials science studies, a number of recent efforts focus on potentially exploiting the resulting functional property changes in novel electronics and photonics as well as understanding emergent phenomena. This is quite timely, given a grand challenge in twenty-first-century physical sciences is related to enabling continued advances in information processing and storage beyond conventional CMOS scaling. In this brief review, we discuss synthesis of strongly correlated oxides, mechanisms of metal-insulator transitions, and exploratory electron devices that are being studied. Particular emphasis is placed on vanadium dioxide, which…

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  Air Force Office of Scientific Research