Local Temperature Redistribution and Structural Transition During Joule-Heating-Driven Conductance Switching in VO2

Abstract

Joule-heating induced conductance-switching is studied in VO2, a Mott insulator. Complementary in-situ techniques including optical characterization, blackbody microscopy, scanning transmission x-ray microscopy (STXM) and numerical simulations are used. Abrupt redistribution in local temperature is shown to occur upon conductance-switching along with a structural phase transition, at the same current.