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If you are not a condensed matter physicist, vanadium oxide (VO2) may be the coolest material you've never heard of. It's a metal. It's an insulator. It's a window coating and an optical switch. And thanks to a new study by physicists at Rice University, scientists have a new way to reversibly alter VO2's electronic properties by treating it with one of the simplest substances -- hydrogen.
So what is VO2? It's an oxidized form of the metal vanadium, an ingredient in hardened steel. When oxygen reacts with vanadium to form VO2, the atoms form crystals that look like long rectangular boxes. The vanadium atoms line up along the four edges of the box in regularly spaced rows. A single crystal of VO2 can have many of these boxes lined up side by side, and the crystals conduct electricity like wire as long as they are kept warm.
"The weird thing about this material is that if you cool it, when you get to 67 degrees Celsius, it goes through a phase transition that is both electronic and structural," said Rice's Douglas Natelson, lead co-author of the study in this week's Nature Nanotechnology. "Structurally, the vanadium atoms pair up and each pair is slightly canted, so you no longer have these long chains. When the phase changes, and these pairings take place, the material changes from being a electrical conductor to an electrical insulator."
While other materials exhibit a similar electronic about-face, VO2 is unique in that the change occurs at a relatively modest temperature -- around 153 degrees Fahrenheit -- and sometimes at incredible speed -- less than a trillionth of second. In recent years, scientists have put these quirky properties to work. In 2004, a group in London used VO2 to design a temperature-sensitive window coating that could absorb sunlight on cold days and turn reflective on hot days. And electronics researchers are also working to create optical switches from VO2.
"As an experimental physicist, VO2 is intrig
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| Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University Source:Eurekalert |
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