title: Dense electron system from gate-controlled surface metal-insulator transition.
abstract: Two-dimensional electron systems offer enormous opportunities for science discoveries and technological innovations. Here we report a dense electron system on the surface of single-crystal vanadium dioxide nanobeam via electrolyte gating. The overall conductance of the nanobeam increases by nearly 100 times at a gate voltage of 3 V. A series of experiments were carried out which rule out electrochemical reaction, impurity doping, and oxygen vacancy diffusion as the dominant mechanism for the conductance modulation. A surface insulator-to-metal transition is electrostatically triggered, thereby collapsing the bandgap and unleashing an extremely high density of free electrons from the original valence band within a depth self-limited by the energetics of the system. The dense surface electron system can be reversibly tuned by the gating electric field, which provides direct evidence of the electron correlation driving mechanism of the phase transition in VO(2). It also offers a new material platform for implementing Mott transistor and novel sensors and investigating low-dimensional correlated electron behavior.
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
authors.forename: Kai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Deyi
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Fu
authors.forename: Jinbo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.forename: Joonki
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Suh
authors.forename: Kevin X
authors.initials: KX
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Chun
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: D Frank
authors.initials: DF
authors.lastname: Ogletree
authors.forename: Hua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Shamashis
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sengupta
authors.forename: Asif
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Khan
authors.forename: Chun Wing
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Yeung
authors.forename: Sayeef
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Salahuddin
authors.forename: Mandar M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Deshmukh
authors.forename: Junqiao
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu