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Strongly correlated materials display a rich variety of phenomena, including superconductivity, giant magnetoresistance and metal-insulator transitions, as strong interactions lead to competing ground states. Vanadium oxide is a prototypical correlated electron material that exhibits a large metal-insulator transition (MIT) close to room temperature. The scientific interest in this material arises from the debate behind the transport mechanisms that are responsible for the transition: is it a Peierls-like transition or a Mott transition? The large resistive switching and the convenient temperature make this a potential material in electrical and electro-optic applications as switches and memory elements.
I will present results from our recent studies on transport properties of single nanobeam devices of vanadium oxide. We seek to control and understand the MIT using several tuning parameters such as temperature, metal doping and electric field. Probing in the nanoscale allows us to distinguish between possible physical mechanisms that are responsible for the M-I transition and to explore the nonequilibrium physics of correlated materials. |