Tuning the hysteresis of a metal-insulator transition via lattice compatibility

Y G Liang; S Lee; H S Yu; H R Zhang; Y J Liang; P Y Zavalij; X Chen; R D James; L A Bendersky; A V Davydov; X H Zhang; I Takeuchi

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-17351-w

Tuning the hysteresis of a metal-insulator transition via lattice compatibility

Nat Commun. 2020 Jul 15;11(1):3539. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-17351-w.

Authors

Y G Liang^#¹, S Lee^#^{1

2}, H S Yu¹, H R Zhang^{3

4}, Y J Liang⁵, P Y Zavalij⁶, X Chen⁷, R D James⁸, L A Bendersky^{3

4}, A V Davydov⁴, X H Zhang⁹, I Takeuchi^{10

11}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
² Department of Physics, Pukyong National University, Busan, 48513, South Korea.
³ Theiss Research, Inc, La Jolla, CA, 92037, USA.
⁴ Material Science and Engineering Division, Materials Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, 20899, USA.
⁵ Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
⁶ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
⁷ Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong.
⁸ Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA.
⁹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA. xhzhang@umd.edu.
¹⁰ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA. takeuchi@umd.edu.
¹¹ Maryland Quantum Materials Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA. takeuchi@umd.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Structural phase transitions serve as the basis for many functional applications including shape memory alloys (SMAs), switches based on metal-insulator transitions (MITs), etc. In such materials, lattice incompatibility between transformed and parent phases often results in a thermal hysteresis, which is intimately tied to degradation of reversibility of the transformation. The non-linear theory of martensite suggests that the hysteresis of a martensitic phase transformation is solely determined by the lattice constants, and the conditions proposed for geometrical compatibility have been successfully applied to minimizing the hysteresis in SMAs. Here, we apply the non-linear theory to a correlated oxide system (V_1-xW_xO₂), and show that the hysteresis of the MIT in the system can be directly tuned by adjusting the lattice constants of the phases. The results underscore the profound influence structural compatibility has on intrinsic electronic properties, and indicate that the theory provides a universal guidance for optimizing phase transforming materials.