New studies explain insulator-to-metal transition of vanadium dioxide
Saturday, April 11, 2015 - 11:30
in Physics & Chemistry
When heated to just above room temperature, the electrical conductivity of vanadium dioxide (VO2) abruptly increases by a factor of 10,000. Experiments coupled with high-performance computation reveal how the unusually large lattice vibrations, which are the oscillations of atoms about their equilibrium positions, stabilize this highly conductive metallic phase.