Simultaneous Structural and Electronic Transitions in Epitaxial <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>VO</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mi>Ti</mml:mi><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">O</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:mn>001</mml:mn><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math>
Galo J. Páez Fajardo, Christopher N. Singh, Matthew J. Wahila, Keith Tirpak, Nicholas F. Quackenbush, Shawn Sallis, Hanjong Paik, Yufeng Liang, Darrell G. Schlom, Tien‐Lin Lee, Christoph Schlueter, Wei‐Cheng Lee, Louis F. J. Piper
Abstract
Recent reports have identified new metaphases of VO_{2} with strain and/or doping, suggesting the structural phase transition and the metal-to-insulator transition might be decoupled. Using epitaxially strained VO_{2}/TiO_{2} (001) thin films, which display a bulklike abrupt metal-to-insulator transition and rutile to monoclinic transition structural phase transition, we employ x-ray standing waves combined with hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to simultaneously measure the structural and electronic transitions. This x-ray standing waves study elegantly demonstrates the structural and electronic transitions occur concurrently within experimental limits (±1 K).