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[PAST EVENT] Physics Colloquium: Hyun-Tak Kim
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Hyun-Tak Kim, Quantum Computing Lab., Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), South Korea, Title of Talk: Mechanism and applications of the Mott transition in vanadium dioxide (VO2)
Abstract:
Revealing the mechanism of the metal-insulator transition (MIT) induced by a change of on-site electron-electron interaction (Mott transition), is one of the important contemporary issues in condensed matter physics. Applications of the Mott transition span cutting-edge technologies such as neuromorphic devices, high-sensitivity photon detection, and MIT quantum bits (qubits). We have long studied the mechanism of the Mott transition in a representative material vanadium dioxide (VO2) with the metallic electronic structure of half filling (3d1). In this talk, we will show the experimental results for both the mechanism and applications of the Mott transition and prospects for future research. We demonstrate observations of the monoclinic and correlated metal (MCM) phase before the structural phase transition for proving the Mott transition in VO2 films.. As applications of the MIT for non-boolean computing, the negative differential resistance (NDR) switching and the measured MIT oscillation are shown in VO2-based devices. Moreover, a high-sensitivity MIT photon detector using NDR switching is displayed. These applications form the basis of Mitronics (MIT + electronics). Furthermore, in future we shall explore the relationship between the Mott transition and the emergence of the metal phase on the surface of topological insulators.